Local Continuing Education Opportunities

This is Floris Flam, the gallery blog editor for January. The following material was written by Betty Ford, one of our gallery's art quilters, and discusses a workshop she took on fabric painting.

We've discussed how our gallery members travel to attend workshops to improve their technical and design skills and to master new techniques.  Sometimes we have the opportunity to learn without leaving town.  The Washington area is rich in learning opportunities for fiber artists such as the Art League School in Alexandria, VA.

Recently, gallery member Betty Ford learned new fabric painting techniques from gallery member Julie Booth at a series of classes sponsored by the Art League.  It consisted of seven weekly classes at which Julie presented various techniques where the students had time to experiment and learn by doing and to produce a large number of exciting samples. Here is the report of a happy student.

"The class began with our creating painted background fabrics using Pebeo SetaColor — fabrics on which we could layer other surface design techniques. These backgrounds were created in a number of ways, some resulting in pieces that were quite plain:

while others were more complex:

On these and other backgrounds we stamped, using stamps we carved ourselves or made by other processes. Stamps also included natural materials such as leaves.

"Julie, recipient of the Potomac Fiber Arts Guild’s 2011 Margaret M. Conant grant, has spent the year studying and experimenting with “kitchen” resists. She shared a number of these techniques with us . Below is my fabric made using a flour paste resist on a pale blue background that I painted in the class.

"This fabric was made by using rubber bands as resists then adding paint to the bunched up fabric. To me this piece has a very gardenlike appearance so I will probably make it into a whole-cloth quilt.

"Our entire class agreed that making gelatin plate monoprints was exciting and produced some of the most useful pieces. This is a completed small quilt using one of these prints.

"Of course, for a quilter, seeing this work in a finished piece is the major satisfaction for all the fun of painting fabric. The little quilt below was made by the “wipe-up” technique — dribbling paint on mylar then doing as the name suggests.

Betty concludes, "Excellent class!" I think that, seeing Betty's photos of both her fabrics and her finished work, you'll agree.

Julie Booth's "Little Sister"

The theme of our current show at the Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery is work inspired by The Crone of Crazy, an art quilt by Pamela Allen. One of the Jurors' Recognitions was awarded to a cloth figure by Julie Booth, "Little Sister," shown here:

I asked Julie about her process for designing and making these figures. She told me that she has been creating cloth figures and fiber sculptures since 1994. In 1996, she started to move away from her more traditional “folk art” style to create more stylized figures based on simple shapes. Julie has always loved the colors and textures of indigenous crafts of many countries, in particular the carved animal sculptures of Oaxaca, Mexico and the fabrics and masks of Africa. As a result, many of her works incorporate both “human” and “animal” characteristics, often blurring the line between the two.

All of Julie’s fabrics are hand printed. She carves many of her print blocks from linoleum-like products, including Speedball Speedy Carve and Speedy Stamp and Staedtler Mastercarve. In addition, she likes to create blocks from recycled materials and materials that can be found in craft stores, including Styrofoam, layered cardboard, hot glue, craft foam, and moldable foam. Julie prints these blocks on solid colored cotton fabrics using Pebeo Setacolor fabric paints. She enjoys printing different block patterns and designs on top of each other for more interesting, layered effects. More recently, Julie has started with white cotton or silk and hand painted her own background fabrics before printing. Julie won the 2010 Potomac Fiber Arts Guild Margaret M. Conant Grant for a project to study the use of ordinary and inexpensive materials found in most homes as resists in art projects. Her new knowledge, which she will present to Guild members, will add even more possibilities to her printed fabrics. Here is a group of Julie's fabrics:

Julie’s figures are made up of combinations of simple stuffed shapes that are sewn together to create an interesting form. Julie’s designs often start as thumbnail sketches which she’s doodled on scraps of paper. When a sketch “speaks” to her, she will first draw a full-scale rough sketch which she then refines and breaks down into the simple shapes that will make up the piece. The next stage is to make a muslin “dummy”, machine sewing and stuffing the shapes, then hand sewing them together.

Once the design is set, Julie will create pattern pieces from quilter’s template plastic. She uses these to trace and cut out the patterns from her block printed fabrics. After the simple shapes are stuffed and sewn together, Julie further hand embellishes them with appliqué, stitching, and bead embroidery. For many of her pieces, Julie creates polymer clay faces using either “faux” stone techniques or an embossing technique which she developed.

Julie used polymer clay faces in "Friends are Angels" and Warrior:

Each of Julie's figures has its own personality. It is always interesting to see what the current show brings.