Making Merry....

It's an apron. Thought I better say it right off, because you might wonder what you're looking at. Our Christmas party at the Fiber Art Bee featured the usual fun along with a challenge and a swap. The challenge was to make an art apron for a runway show at the December meeting. This is my entry. I took a number of pieces of fabric that I'd painted, stamped, dyed, gelli printed, and otherwise embellished and combined them in one project. I used a Vanilla House pattern and included a side pocket. Fun and useful, too!

Nearly 20 members made their versions of aprons for the challenge employing painting, Angelina fiber, stenciling, and many more techniques.

Our Art Warrior Doll instructors, sisters Merri and Celeste, both added an Art Warrior doll to their aprons and embellished them to a fare-thee-well. Isn't that a great term?

A big piece of tie-dyed fabric and a hand-painted apple make this a colorful entry.

Kandace added a little of everything to her apron, from rust dyeing to doodling and stenciling. She stamped the words "I love this..." and "I love this, too..." all over the apron.

And Gretchen had a similar idea, incorporating bits from her many art quilt projects in her entry. The words say "Fiber art is my passion."

Then came the swap. All who participated made 5 pieces of fabrics that measure about 1/4 yard using a technique of their choice. Mine was ice-dyed and you can see it in the background of this photo and the first one above, behind the apron. In return I received, from the top, a bold cotton print with a glitzy sheer fused on top with Misty Fuse, a sponge-painted cotton using textile paints, and a stamped and foiled botanical print.

Of course we all wanted one of every fabric, but it was a random draw. I was especially pleased to get this discharge-dyed one. Sherry explained that she used a large stencil (like the ones used for walls), taped it to black cotton with painter's tape, and brushed on Soft Scrub white cleaning cream with a toothbrush. She allowed it to remove the black dye and then washed it in a de-chlorinator solution (she used a product from the pet store for fish tanks). The interesting part is that she used three different black fabrics, and this one discharged to orange while the others were more of a khaki/rust color.

And this lovely piece is Laura's discharge printed one. She was not happy with the clarity of the image she used, so she hand painted it to accent the design further with acrylic paints. It was fascinating to learn a bit about how each member made her pieces. This was a great start to the holidays! And we had a terrific pot-luck lunch, too.