Fabric Printing at Home Blog Tour, Day 6

Updated 2/11/15: we are extending our commenting period until this Friday, February 13 to be eligible to win. And we are now awarding TWO copies of Julie’s book!

Several weeks ago we wrote a review of the wonderful new book by Julie B. Booth, and today it’s my turn with her Fabric Printing at Home Blog Tour, running from February 1 to the 14th.

During these two weeks there are 14 opportunities to win a copy of Fabric Printing at Home: Quick and Easy Fabric Design Using Fresh Produce and Found Objects...comment on this posting below to be entered into today’s drawing!

For my turn on the tour, I wanted to give you a bit of the flavor of the techniques you will learn from Julie...whether that is in person in a class (as I describe below), or by self-study through her book, which contains thorough instructions and illustrations to guide you.

While Julie rightfully has fans around the country, we are lucky to have her live near us in Virginia, so we were able to host her for the first of what we hope will be many workshops at Artistic Artifacts.

Usually I miss out on the fun of classes: too busy with administrative work, on the road vending at an event...some reason or another. Luckily this time I was able to make the opportunity to be a student in Julie’s new workshop, Fabric Printing at Home: A Kitchen Sampler. What a great way to spend 2 days! (We are repeating this class on April 18-19 — I personally can highly recommend you registering for it!)

Above, we are ready to GO! Julie is walking us through the plan for our first day, where we concentrated on printing fabrics.

For each printing technique Julie discussed, we first had a demonstration from her, and then time for us to practice and refine.

While we all couldn’t wait to get to carving up the vegetables (more on that below!), we began the class spending time hand-painting background fabrics. Julie’s book points out that while you can certainly use commercial solid-color fabric to print on, why not add a personal touch by painting your own?

One fun tip/technique we learned from her involved getting a second hand-painted background: you simply place an unpainted swatch of fabric atop a freshly painted fabric, then brayer the back of the top, unpainted fabric. It picks up the extra color, giving you a lighter version as well as some wonderful texture from the brayer.

Here are a few of my fabrics created on the first day of class:

Above, plastic wrap prints. Below, using a printing plate of recycled cardboard with hot glue squiggles.

Above, an aluminum baking pan used as a stencil and then a stamp. Below, recycled cardboard cut away plus corn on the cob. (I think this is my very favorite!)

As mentioned above, we all couldn’t wait to get to the veggies! Below, some of the vegetables I carved and used in class.

Above, my carved vegetables print. Below, my classmate Betty’s carved carrots print.

We all enjoyed our first day in class! Everyone was commenting on the fun of learning how to use so many creative — and inexpensive — materials and techniques for surface design.

The next day we all arrived in the morning to our dried and ready fabric stash. The second day of the workshop focused working with your printed fabrics to create your own design of a of a small art quilt or fabric sampler, embellishing our fabric designs with hand stitching. Right, Julie demonstrates hand-stitching.

Two of the reference texts Julie bought for class use were Patchwork Folk Art by Jane T. Bolton, and Mark Making by Tilleke Schwarz. Personally, I’m loving the embroidery resurgence we are seeing nowadays!

While I loved the fabrics I created, when it came down to stitching I decided to focus on my Starfish, in progress below.

I straight stitched with black embroidery floss to further define the starfish. My love of black and white printed fabrics is well known, and I love the contrast they give this. I am thinking that I might add an actual starfish to this ... hmm, maybe?

As you can see from the results of this class, Fabric Printing at Home: Quick and Easy Fabric Design Using Fresh Produce and Found Objects is chock full of amazingly creative printing ideas that are easy to do, resulting in fun for all ages and levels of expertise. Visit Day 2 of Julie’s Fabric Printing at Home Blog Tour posting to view a several more photos of the beautiful fabrics that were created in our class!

To enter today’s drawing for a free copy of Julie’s book, please leave your response to the following question in the comments section below.

What is your favorite fabric paint? Reasons why?

Visit Susan Purney Mark’s blog tomorrow (Saturday, February 7) for the next turn in this fun blog tour!

Thank you, Julie!