Fantastic Fabric Painting Class....Early Results

What a great motivating day I had yesterday ! My guild held an an all day fabric painting workshop with Barb Murak. She was a very patient, informational teacher. We learned many new techniques to base further exploration on and I do plan to experiment further. This first pic is two layers of fabric painting....the first layer used wooden skewers and toothpicks under fabric while brushing across to make highlighted impression of paint. Second layer is obviously a large stamp. This one needs some dirtying up though. It's too clean for me.

This example has three layers...using string under fabric, cool gothic cross (actually like the ghost-y images best) and using onion netting ( stuff a bag of onions come in) I stenciled, brushing across fabric willy nilly. Love it. Now this is dirty. ( and by dirty I mean dirt-dirty)

Small rubber bands under fabric on piece on left. Crumpled foil underneath, and a large bunion pad glued on top of an empty vitamin bottle (for ease in handling) made the circle's. The top layer is rubbery shelf liner cut, glued and stapled to a wood block making it easier to stamp with. How cool is that!

We also learned ways to paint on wet (misted, not saturated) fabric. The left one used brown, mustard & yellow. The one on the right used a large X stamp and the onion packaging again. I will definitely be doing much more fabric painting. I have wanted to do this for a long time..this class will be the catalyst to further experimentation.

The last piece we worked on was a wet technique...here is Barb's samples of bouquets.

and another one of Barb's above.
Here is my attempt. I am not an artist but I am thinking thread painting will improve it!

I have my OBW on the design wall. I am having trouble coming up with suitable layout however. My repeat was 8" which means I end up with less blocks than a 12" or 24" repeat would yield. Since I have less blocks to work with there is not alot of options. This is what I am looking at right now. Hhhhmmmmmm.

As you can see each block is awesome. Each block is also pretty busy. Here is the original fabric. Thoughts? I really love this show One Block Wonder thing. I was eye balling another fabric today! It's actually in the same line.

I spent the better part of today trying to prepare the many unfinished art quilts I must have ready for our little groups show at our regional arts counsel in July & August. Is is truly evident finishing is not my forte! I got through 6 pieces and guess what......only 2 are actually labeled and sleeved! Some needed tweaking and that takes time. So my mission will be, over the next 3 weeks, to finish as many as possible and call it done.

Melissa & I are on another mission as well. To drop some weight. I left off at Weight Watchers in February-ish and gained 6 of the 15 lbs I had lost. NO NO. Not going to happen. My goal is that 6 plus 10 more. That pic I posted of all of us at our sewing gathering last week was the kick in the ass I needed to get back on track.

I have learned:

1. Apparently I am allergic to pistachios. Sneezing, stuffy nose, scratchy throat, but I knew it was bad when my lips started tingling. 
2. Shutter Island, the book. W-a-s-t-i-n-g my time. Start another book.
3. Nancy Crow's exhibit at Schweinfurth Museum in Auburn NY,  now through August 15th.
4. Chester, the old cat, is doing great on his overactive thyroid meds. Blood tests reveal no other issues. Glad. He's my favorite.
5. Dean is killing me with his odorous gaseous blasts.....from the other room! Must walk him now.