STITCH snippets and sun printing

Judi Shipley made this striking sun print using skewers and plastic cups as her resists.

My art quilt group, STITCH, had a very colorful meeting this month, including these sun prints that some of our members brought for show and tell.

Judi S. made the fantastic green print, above, using bamboo skewers and translucent cups placed upside down to create the resists. She scattered rock salt on top of the wet fabric to create spots. The group below was made by Judi and Lois.

Leaves were placed on wet fabric in the orange and blue pieces.

I'm pretty sure Lois made this gorgeous piece. Stencils made the flower designs.

If you're not familiar with fabric sun printing, here it is in a nutshell:

SUN PRINTING

Paint your fabric with Setacolor transparent fabric paints. While the fabric is still very wet, place resists on top and then let it dry in the sun. (It also works inside under bright lights.) When you remove the resists, the fabric under them will be much lighter. This works because the paints are light sensitive. Here's a link to Dharma Trading Co. that explains the process and offers sun printing supplies for sale: http://www.dharmatrading.com/sunpainting/

The meeting was at Lois's house, so she gave us a tour of her sewing studio. She used to teach, and the "Mrs. Johnson" plaque is from those days.

Here's Lois and her glass-fronted fabric cabinet, which I covet.

When Mrs. Johnson was a young teacher in the '60s, she made this very mod free-form, color-blocked knit tunic top. Groovy!

Then Mrs. Johnson gave us our surprise assignment. She brought out trays on which she had organized some of her scraps, by color, and gave us each a tray (we couldn't pick) to use to make a fabric background. She told us ahead of time to bring our machines, but gave no hint as to what we'd be doing.

Anne jumped right in with her yellows (yummy) and quickly came up with an exuberant, energetic composition.

Barbara was more deliberate with her oranges, carefully composing and balancing her piece. Don't those oranges look great with her purple clothes? And Anne's pink sweater goes well with her yellows.

I had shades of blue that I don't normally work with (I lean toward the oranges and pinks above), but I like the way my composition is shaping up. I sewed it together later with rows of closely spaced vertical stitching with different blue threads.

We had some other fun show-and-tells, but they'll have to wait for another post. Hope this was inspiring! Thank you, Mrs. Johnson.

Have a colorful day