Java Art Exchange
About a month ago a challenge was issued to use Lynn Krawczyk’s new book “Intentional Printing” to make Java based artwork–a six inch square using three of the printing techniques illustrated in her book. I signed up–we had just a two week deadline.
I started with a piece of indigo space dyed cotton. I substituted a piece of foam in a zip-lock bag for a gelli-plate. I did some stenciling with stuart-Gill Metallica and discovered it did not work well with stenciling or stamping but did add a lot of sparkle. I also did some resist dying using some embroidery floss on top of the fabric. Somehow I was too enthusiastic with the water needed and I ended up with a very dark piece of fabric. I tried screen printing over the top of it with yellow paint—but it didn’t show up much. So back to the drawing board and used a light fabric and did some stamping and stenciling. Then I cut it into 7 inch squares, cut it up into odd pieces, pieced together with another in the stack, cut again and pieced again. then I used a beautiful hand-dyed rayon thread by Elin Noble both hand stitching and in the bobbin to emphasize the coffee cup motif.
My pieces will be sent out this week–and I will be thrilled to receive pieces from seven other artists.
Here is the process:
Sylvia Weir Art 