Category: take it further challenge

TIF 7 almost done

January 29, 2008


TIF 7 almost done
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I need to trim it up square, and decide on borderage.

Also today was circus class with Red Kate. We worked really hard on handstands and stretching, and finished with things we were practicing – I did a roll up on the fabric (getting more interesting) and Kate is working on splits.

See?

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I am hugely amused by the mother/daughter straddle-up head stands. Sorry it comes up so huge, I’ll fix that soon.

Oh, and Red Kate here –

Kate_headstand

TIF 4 center

January 22, 2008


TIF 4 center
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I sat down and worked on this steadily for more than two hours today, and I am feeling pretty chipper about it.

I have a grid of 9 leaves, this is the center panel, with four more printed on satin and four others printed on chiffon. I am thinking about what to do for a border, to keep things from flying too far out from the center. On the whole the colors are close to what we were given, with a range around the purples and greens. Unfortunately, I have been unable to create or apply the clear blue-green from the palette. I’m not sure if I get demerits for that or not!

Circus class today, and even though I was in a vile mood, I did really well and had fun. I climbed the fabric repeatedly, and climbed half way up and did a foot lock. There is one goal accomplished. I still have to master a cross-back straddle up. Bronwyn showed me how to do a roll-up, so I practiced low down (so she could get me out if I got stuck) and next week I’ll try it higher up. Red Kate flew me like an airplane, and I did a kind of front neck stand on her back. (Impossible to describe – I’ll bring the camera next week.)

week 2 leaves tucked in

January 13, 2008


week 2 leaves tucked in
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I have  a lot of fabrics that have TIF Challenge colors all over them trying to get the colors etter, or seeing how hard and long to press, or just to see what the next one looks like. So I used some of these to make this weeks object. I realized I like it better in this orientation – I made it horizontally. I was thinking about this postcard from last year:


May 26
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Alice finished a hat for a doll.


dolly hat

I made the doll before she was born, but couldn’t find hair I liked. Alice carried her around a lot when she was one and two years old, and has revisited her since. She persuaded me to put some tibetan lamb on her head for hair, and captured her back to her room. Later that week, Alice insisted on learning to sew doll clothes, so I set her up with some stretchy stuff and she made leggings/pants and shirts, stole some socks from another doll, and started on this hat last week.

Note the band of purling as decoration, the pointy top, the i-cord finish and tassel. oop – I have to take another picture to properly show off all the details.

experiment that did work

January 12, 2008


Jan 11b
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Turns out you can use tissue paper for transfer paints. I wasn’t sure, in part because I wasn’t sure which side of the paper the paint had dried on. The tissue paper is so light that when I was trying to rest things on the radiator to dry the tissue paper was floating right up the wall. I got some nice texture from the tissue paper being slightly scrunched  as well. I think that is an artifact of the satin I was transferring to, rather than a constant function of the tissue paper.

I also experimented with transferring onto other textures of fabric. I have a startling amount of white felt, so I tried several layers on that, with interesting, if fuzzy, results. It takes a lot of color to get down into the structure of the felt, so it can carry a lot of layers of color, so long as they are all light.


Jan 11a
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I also worked for a while on the TIF Challenge. I am having detailed thoughts about other topics, but this is what I worked on making. Today felt like process rather than planning, so I just ploughed ahead with cutting and stitching, to see where it would take me.

The thought was alternating rectangles of felt, with leaves on them. I like the stand up seams. I adore the leaves. I have more leaves on sheer fabric to go over the more solid blocks. There is another picture of the larger object on Flickr.


TIF 2
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

As for the lack of posting yesterday. Well. I am thinking I might get take Fridays off. I read. I knitted. I had a nice lunch with Al.

ideas that didn’t work

January 10, 2008

So today I tried a bunch of things that didn’t quite work.

I found a handful of pine cones and tips of branches in the parking lot at the Y this morning, an after effect of the wind yesterday, and thought I’d see if paint on them would transfer with the fabric laid over the top and pressed. I’ll tell you right now, it doesn’t. I got some lumpy places on the fabric with no color for most of the pine cones, for the wet pine cone I got a brown sausage shaped transfer. For the needles I got some faint images, and a very nice scent, but mostly nothing really useful.

I tried transferring onto sheer silk. The color went right through and set quite nicely on the ironing board cover. The silk remains pristine.

I did make up some parts for the TIF Challenge, but I’m not sure how I’m going to use them. Working with these nearly perfect leaf images on shiny shiny fabric is unexpectedly inhibiting at the moment. I love the leaves and want to showcase them but then I can’t think what to do to, or around them to finish the piece. I need some doodling time.

transfer test, vocabulary words

January 9, 2008


Jan 9
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The day started out this morning all misty and mysterious, raining a little, and very foggy.

Img_3192_2Img_3193_2

About noon a front cracked through like a whip, and blew the fog and clouds away, leaving a sharp, bright sparkling afternoon. Gusty wind has been whisking around the house all afternoon.

I was thinking about transfer paints and iron on things today cleaning stalls, and came up with a couple questions. The first was whether I could mix the transfer paints to make the palette for the TIF Challenge. The paints on the paper look different from the transfered colors, so there is a certain uncertainty involved. Then I wondered if t-shirt transfers worked the same way, sublimating ink onto the fabric, or if they used a different mechanism. And then I remembered two pages of transfers I’d made in a class years ago using a color copier. How did they work?

So I started with the TIF palette. I mixed up what I thought should be the colors I wanted and tried them out. I think I got pretty close, so I will be able to use the transfer paints and keep the TIF challenge in line with the media of the moment. The t-shirt transfers do not use the same mechanism to get the image onto the cloth. Transfer paints have to dry on the paper, and heat makes them sublimate (go directly from solid to gas) and the color-carrying gas is absorbed into the fabric.

The t-shirt prints are a thin layer of plastic that peels off backing paper when ironed onto the fabric – the color is carried on a separate layer and can be peeled off with a fingernail. Which could be an interesting exploration at some point – distressing the iron-ons – but isn’t what I’m after. The transfers from the color copier work the same way as the t-shirt transfers, but the layer of plastic is thinner and the heat required to set it is higher.

Now I wonder if I had access to a dye-sublimation printer, if it would work directly on polyester fabric, or if images from it would iron onto the fabric better.

I wonder if you can paint transfer paint directly onto polyester and iron it in, so to speak.

process colors

January 8, 2008

A huge forehead smack for me. If the transfer paints are process colors, then I can use all my old knowledge of color mixing for print to get colors I am aiming for instead of bumbling around in color space. And that means that I can use the Media of the Moment to explore the Take it Further Challenge (it is just TIF from here on out friends) and that makes integrating my life much, much easier.

Color swatches for that tomorrow, bed now.