Martha Wolfe Class

This past Monday I took a class taught by Martha Wolfe, organized by the East Bay Heritage Quilters. I still don't think of myself as a "quilter"....I never seem to get past the mixed media part, even when I work with fabric I glue it and don't stitch it with padding to make something quilted. So I've been holding off joining, for free that I promptly find myself over my head. But they have a lot of workshops that don't involve actual quilting, and always, in my mind, I am going to move onto quilting soon, very soon, even if it's just hand quilting.

Part of it is that I don't want to sit hunched over a machine for long; I've spent too much of my life in Aeron chairs, leaning into a computer screen, and now I want to move about more. But hand quilting can be small and can be taken anywhere, so that is probably where I will start.....soon.....very soon.....

Meanwhile, I took this great class on Gelli plate printing....both abstract patterns and detailed leaf prints. I could say that I "know" how to use a Gelli plate, but taking a class with someone who has their own methods on something can open up new worlds of possibilities. Plus then I went to a booksale and an evening lecture by Martha on the founding of Viewpoints 9, an international group of quilt artists who give themselves general themes and periodic prompts and separately complete works that they then share with each other and exhibit world-wide. This group has been active for several years now and they have never yet all been at the same place at the same time.  So much to learn about, so little time. I was brain fried and overloaded with human contact by the end of the day.

On to the leaves.  Leaves with thick veins make the best prints. We combined them with various backgrounds that we had printed earlier.  Most of these leaves are from my own yard. The leave stay fresh enough to use for several days, though once they have been painted on they are more likely to stick or tear.

This is a secondary print, made after the first one and suitable for the background of some future leaf print.

Another starting point, or perhaps I could do my usual thing with stitches and stiffening with glue (I now have a clear acrylic medium that I want to try in place of ModPodge).

details of an abutilon leaf:

Ground cherry leaf

Here are some prints where dark color was laid down on the plate and leave used as masks. The background made earlier shows through where the leaves are. This was fascinating as I thought some of my backgrounds were way too "busy" with competing shapes, but they look unified once only part of the background shows through

No leaf prints here, just a background made from a hot plate holder and a square stamp from India, and my favorite 3 fish stamp, also from India. I'm pretty sure there are now a lot of Indian stamps made for the tourist trade, as my rather gaudy fish stamp seems to be. That's OK, I'll take what I can get, traditional or not. They are carved out of very heavy wood and will last a long time.

A hotplate stamp with silver paint on black loosely woven fabric; stamped on top are copper triangles I made with sticky backed foam board.

Toilet paper roll pattern. I bought some toilet paper from Grocery Outlet once that had very thick, strong cardboard at the base. Needless to say I saved every one and now I'm glad I did.

More leaves directly printed on pale gold stamped fabric. The fabric I bought from our local Target store and they call it cheesecloth even though the cheesecloth we normally buy is much more flimsy. This stuff gets stiff when painted on and is loosely, but regularly woven.

This leaf was printed over cloth previously stamped with a hexagon hot plate mat. I have a collection of these mats, now in their own special box.

This one will need more work. It is the second run, after the leaves have been taken off the plate. There are so many layers of paint on the plate that they were starting to flake off onto the cloth. It would be interesting to dye the cloth in some contrasting lighter colors.

One of my favorites, eucalyptus branch ends that the teacher brought. Again, the busy background was mostly hidden and added a lot of interest to the resulting print.

Here is the second print, again with a lot of paint flecking off.

Bonus stained glass with other colors behind it. Many classes happen in church buildings on weekdays, so there are often some pretty touches.

So the next day I applied what I learned, using the same leaves, to some of my already existing pieces that I had decided needed to be backgrounds for something else.

What I find when I take a class or learn anything new is that I need to play with it afterwards until it becomes "mine" in some way.....until I don't consciously think that I'm experimenting with something that I learned but rather think that I am using one of several options that are at my own disposal. I will have added small variations, had related ideas that I have run with, etc. etc. I've reached this point with rubber stamp carving....I won't do much for several months, but when I'm ready I gather up the materials I know I will need and start in on new projects rather than revisit the projects I used in my class lessons.