Journal
Random Musings on Art and LIfe
In preparation for my first gallery show, I had to solve the problem of how to sign a stitched painting. The pieces were finished. They were stretched on internal frames. They were absolutely ready for the packing crate. Except that… oops!… Nothing had a signature! Now I knew I could sign the back of the…
There are few things more frustrating than mistakes that can be avoided. In this post, I share my mis-adventure with a marking pencil — and how you can avoid this mistake in your fabric art projects.
When I add hand stitching to my painted fabric, I want the stitching to stand out. Today, I want to show you my latest stitch combination experiment. I call it Pekinese Stem Stitch. [Tweet “Bored with Stem Stitch? Dress it up with a Pekinese-style wrap!”] In traditional embroidery, Pekinese Stitch begins with a Back…
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Almost 3 years ago, I made a lovely bag from some of my painted fabric. And, for the first time, I added pieces of Kraft-Tex to the corners to corners of the bag to protect them from wear and tear. (See Kaleidoscope Bag post here.) Just last week, as I was posting this link…
Last week I shared an article by Nancy Kazlauckas about how she tests Paintstik colors for a project. I’m not quite as methodical as Nancy, but I did use her color testing method before I started painting on my big 3-panel project. In this case, a couple of hours up front saved me a lot…
To wrap up the series on Extreme Stenciling, I want to go back a couple of years to some experiments I did with suede. I met Jayme and Megan from Bella Nonna Design Studio at Quilt Market — and accepted their challenge to see if Paintstik colors could be used on leather and suede. To…
by Shelly Stokes, Founder and Creative Mentor As I mentioned in the first part of this series, I have been doing some serious stenciling over the past couple of months. I hand-cut three stencils that are 50” high x 20” wide and stenciled the images on black fabric panels. For this project, I wanted the…
In the past month, I have spent between 25 and 30 hours stenciling images on a new project. I am working on black fabric and a nice range of iridescent and matte Paintstik colors. For my project, I wanted my images bold and bright. Yes, I wanted them to jump off the fabric. Now that…
I was visiting with one of my friends last week and our conversation turned to the Shape Shifter Community Challenge. She is planning to make a handbag and she wanted my opinion on which Paintstik colors would look best on her fabric. I remembered a fantastic idea for testing colors from Nancy Kazlauckas, as well…