Kantha workshop and sunprinting

It was a lovely, sunny day to spend at the gallery with the door wide open and the light streaming in- a far cry from my gallery-sitting the first time (brr). Today (meaning Sunday- just noticed this shows up as Monday! since it's so late at night!) I had 3 former students take up my offer of a Kantha embroidery workshop. I packed up a tote full of fabric scraps, thread, needles, and scissors, brought some snacky goodies. I didn't feel like I had to teach them much, as they've all been with me before, but I did a short demo on building a composition, layering the fabrics, and selecting stitches/patterning to use, and encouraged them to to look around the gallery and the outdoors for inspiration.

It's fun to see bits and pieces of fabrics I've made fall under another's hand. Fran Schatz took some arashi shibori yellow, some screen-printed green, and one of my digitally printed sparrows to create this bird on a limb scene. Hopefully she'll send me a picture when it's finished Denise Fox found some leftover yellow arashi from my altarcloth and layered a transparent green chiffon and strips of pink and brown curled into rosettes for a more dimensional approach.

Donna Bridy was inspired by a mural within sight out the front door of the gallery, and found this great combination of colors and textures. Lovely!

My wall interpretation is up top. I love how just simple running stitch creates a mark and texture. I spent the rest of the evening finishing it up as a sample piece for my final project in surface design. Thanks to the ladies for a wonderful afternoon well-spent!

Another little snippet below to share.. we did some sunprinting last week in class using setacolor painted on the background and then layered with objects and set out in the bright sun for an hour to create interesting photograms. I got two layers in, then used dye pastel sticks rubbed over the whole thing to pick up a basketry texture. Very satisfyingly complex fabric!