The Green Eyed Monster

I am taking another semester of graphic arts classes this semester. I will show some of my finished projects.

For this Photoshop assignment, we could only use photos supplied by the instructor, and told to cut and paste fruits and veggies to create a “Veggie Guy.” I tried to have a little fun with mine. Here he is running away from a fork which is made from a Photoshopped parsnip.

A book dust jacket created for a different class:



For the front of the book, we could only use the word “Typography.” I repeated the word over and over to form a background texture. I ran into difficulties getting the look I wanted in Illustrator and InDesign, but finally got the look I was after using Photoshop. By using a gradient to color the text and a different gradient for the background I able to create a subtle texture which adds interest by fading in and out.

A Bird from LeeAnna

A little bird came all the way from Maryland last week. LeeAnna Paylor  made this little quilt for me in exchange for a set of my coffee cup coasters. He is hanging now over my sewing area and reminding me of my new blog friend and encouraging me to be creative.

At the CQFA meeting a couple of weekends ago, we did a project together inspired by Susan Carlson’s technique of creating pictures from tiny scraps of fabric. My project is quickly taking a detour from the original concept and going it’s own way.

Transparent paint used to stencil across the fabric scraps ended up much darker than I had planned, so I added scraps of yellow organza over much of the paint to tone it down. I didn’t like how the black tulle I had was dulling the yellow down, so I am using a sheet of transparent water soluble stabilizer to hold everything together until it is quilted. Then it will probably get another layer of paint.

Sun Printed Spirals

I tried using paper stencils to sun print spirals and tree shapes onto fabric. Did my first color both outside and inside with a 150W bulb. I actually got better results from doing it inside, plus I didn’t have to deal with any breezes blowing the paper stencils away.

Some interesting results happened by layering a green paint and stencils over the yellow, but the results are too subtle for what I want. I tried to order soy wax to use as a resist. Am waiting now since it is out of stock. 

Playing with Shapes

A few months ago at our CQFA meeting we did a shape exchange. Each of us cut two shapes, and exchanged one of our shapes with another member with, the thought that each of would make a quilt incorporating both our shape and our exchange partners shape. I exchanged my tree shape with Sonja who cut a spiral.

Christmas break gave me some spare time to think about actually doing something with my shapes. I think I am going to do some sun printing and maybe some stamping in layers. I tried the idea out in Illustrator today. This also allowed me to test some colors. I think I will go forward with this project and start painting some fabric.

Coffee Cup Coasters

Here are the results of my silk screening project. I gave some sets like these away for Christmas presents before I took any photos. Then I made another set for myself plus a few extras. I have lots of leftover prints which I thought I would give away to quilter friends.


I decided I liked the prints better on fabrics which were printed with an allover large scale print. I only had a couple of small upholstery samples, so off to the fabric store for some printed canvas.

Not all of the words showed up well do to the problems I had developing the screen, and a few of the details have been lost from my design. But overall, I think it was a successful project and a good learning experience. I may opt to cut stencils or get thermofax stencils made for future screening projects.

Go to Off the Wall Friday to see what others have been up to this week. There are some great things up there already.

Screen Printing

I am taking graphic arts classes at Laney College, and it has been keeping me busy. This semester I took anIntro to Design, Typography, and InDesign. I’ve put some of my work from this year up on lindacline.synthasite.com. Some older classwork from photoshop and illustrator classes is there as well.

An assignment in positive/negative space left me with several designs which looked like coasters. I decided I should make coasters for Christmas presents, and the best way I could think to transfer the design was silk screen. This was a learning experience.



My first challenge was finding a clamp on shop lamp with a high enough rating to take a 150 watt bulb. Then I had to order the correct bulb in order to follow my exposure instructions.

Next I questioned the exposure time in the Speedball instructions. 15 inches high for only 7 minutes if I have a shop reflector, but 12 inches high for 45 minutes if I use a pie pan reflector. A service rep at Speedball said that shop reflectors can vary greatly, and I should do a test before I do my expose my final screen. This website gave helpful instructions for testing exposure times. Rather than going out to photocopy onto a transparency, I used an old transparency with a small amount of typing on it, and painted numbers with acrylic paint. To make sure my paper for covering up numbers every five minutes was opaque enough, I glued aluminum foil to the back of some scratch paper. I ended up with 15 inches high for 85 minutes, and have decided the 7 minutes in the instructions has to be a typo.

Coating the screen evenly seemed impossible. I have an older screen, and don’t know if it is silk or polyester. It seems to stretch slightly when it gets wet, which made my squeegee only able to touch the screen near the edges after I had emulsion on the front. I ended up trying to smooth out the emulsion and make it smooth with a paintbrush.

After exposing it, the places where the emulsion was thicker didn’t want to rinse out, so my prints ended up somewhat spotty. I also learned that the glass holding down the transparency should cover the whole design. I thought the being a quarter inch short on the sides wouldn’t matter, but it left a line where the edge of the glass was. The courser light fabric in this photo is my drapes, and not part of the screen.

Making the prints was a simple process in comparison to developing the screen, and went rather quickly. I made some coasters for Christmas presents out of some, and have given them out without photos. I am making a couple of more sets and will show them in another post.

2012 Whisper Quilts Revealed

The Whisper Challenge for our Northern California/Nevada SAQA group had their big reveal meeting of the finished quilts today. It’s always fun to see the directions the various participants went in. You can see all of the quilts on our regions blog.

Here is the starting photo (By Deb Cashatt) that was used for our latest SAQA Whisper Challenge. It shows a busy street corner in Hong Kong. The arched structure is a pedestrian walkway above the street.


I wasn’t sure I would like doing an architectural piece, but I ended up liking how it turned out. With so much going on in the quilt, I needed to decide which details I would focus on and which I would edit out. I ended up piecing together of vertical rectangles to suggest a city, and then I painted the arches on top.

See what others have been up to this week on Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday.