28 August, 2014

Three Musketeers: New digital prints on exhibit

2014-09-24T18:29:13-05:00Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|5 Comments

musketeersAs of today, I have three works in three different exhibitions, which are all open at the same time.  Pretty dang cool!

On the left is “Rain Storm” which was selected to be a part of Textile Center’s MN State Fair exhibition. These were selected works from the show which was originally held in January 2013.  I blogged about it here.  It is made from digitally printed and hand-silkscreened fabric with some hand embroidery.

The center piece is called “Concert” part of the 20 for 20 exhibition that opens tonight at Textile Center.  This is collaborative fabric that was made by attendees of Textile Center’s birthday party.  I guided an activity where everyone was invited to draw an image celebrating fiber art in a square of a 1 inch grid.  I combined all of the 50+ images and made a repeat.  The dress is inspired by some I saw in the collection at Kensington Palace and the draped sash is there to represent membership in an organization (a fun fact I found while looking up trivia about formal dress.)

The third is “Permafrost“, which I blogged just recently.

Here are some close-ups of the fabric designs, so you can see some of the details:

Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 2.13.14 PM Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 2.14.55 PM Screen Shot 2014-08-28 at 2.15.30 PM

 

28 July, 2014

On exhibit: Permafrost

2014-09-24T18:29:33-05:00Sewing & Design, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on On exhibit: Permafrost

flyer

I am absolutely delighted to be one of the artists featured in this regional Surface Design Association show which opens in just a few days.  When I got the announcement of the exhibition call for entry, I thought the concept was intriguing.

The intention of this exhibit is to illustrate things that are transparent, translucent, and/or transformed in this world, OR, things that should be (i.e. government, politics, fundraising, banking, corporate power, policy decisions, healthcare, etc.). You can go for the literal meaning of the words transparent, translucent, transformed… or, you can go with a more conceptual or abstract meaning of the words. We invite both the literal and wide view of this theme.

The piece I made for the show is called “Permafrost”.  We got a great photo (I think) and they must have loved it too because it is there on the flyer.

Rahn_Becka_ttt_Permafrost

To me, the word translucent can be described by layers; something you can see through, but what you look at changes based on the layer you are looking through. This design was created using layers of images: fern frost on a window and a chain link screen. Separately, the two don’t have an obvious relationship, but combined they become a new idea and allow you to see one as it is influenced by the other. “Permafrost” is a geologic term for soil that remains frozen for consecutive years, bound or locked up as ice, and as the title of this piece, describes the connection I see between these two images. The lines of the dress give the feeling of emerging from this image of everlasting winter. The sleeveless style and broken neckline suggest the wearer is cracking and shedding away the ice.

Rahn_Becka_ttt_PermafrostDetailThe fabric is digitally printed, naturally.  It’s a lovely drapey silky faille from Spoonflower. This fabric has a nice weight to it so it hangs well.  A little challenging to sew as it is a bit slippery and tends to shift off grain if you let it.  Hand beaded with vintage flat sequins from Etsy.  Both photos for the design were taken on trips to my hometown.  The frost (which is actually 6 images put together) was on the windows at my mother-in-law’s house.  The chainlink was in a public art space called “Art Alley” and although I faded a lot of the color out for this piece, the fence is painted bright blues and pinks.

27 February, 2014

Rain Storm: Silk screen, digital print, hand embroidery

2014-09-24T18:30:30-05:00Embroidery, Gallery Exhibitions, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|2 Comments

dripdropThis is my piece that is in the A Common Thread show at Textile Center this year.  It’s a 3 piece “suit” with three different techniques.  It started with the fabric for the skirt.  I taught a class last summer about silk screening and I needed a sample of how  you would create an all over repeat with silk screens.  This is two screens – one printed in dark silver and the other in blue.  So it took many passes to screen it to make sure that I wasn’t touching any of the wet paint where the edges of the screen might overlap.  I made the screens using a thermofax machine and specially treated fabric – you print your design on a laser printer or copier and run it through the machine with the fabric.  The coating on the screen is burned away whereever it touches your artwork.  It is a very cool process.  The fabric is a metallic denim and it is printed in metallic ink, so it is hard to photograph because everything reflects the light.  The pattern is a simple pencil skirt because I didn’t want to do much to interrupt the pattern.

The top is digitally printed “silky faille” which is one of Spoonflower’s newer fabrics.  I needed an excuse to get some and try it out.  The pattern is the same rainclouds from the silk screen, shrunk down and colored using the Spoonflower color chart.  The color chart is a piece of fabric printed with “chips” of about 1600 colors that can be printed.  Each one has a code, so you can choose the color you want and enter the code in Photoshop as you create your design. Since I had already printed the skirt fabric, I could compare colors on the color chart to the paint colors and get a pretty great match.  I forgot when I printed this that the pattern pieces are supposed to be cut on the diagonal grain for this top, but I wanted to keep the design running the same way as on the skirt, so I cut  it with the grain.  This is such a nice drapey fabric that it worked just fine.

The jacket is a simple bolero trimmed with a little blue organza around the collar and cuffs and then hand embroidered with rows of running stitch, matching the rain drops from the design.  I laid out the stitching lines with masking tape that I stitched along the edges of. The buttons are vintage ones I found on Etsy.

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