What FUN!   As a result of collaborating with Fiber on a Whim, I am thrilled to announce that they are now carrying a line of thermofax screens designed by ME!  Whooda thunk it?   Best of all, FoaW is debuting the screens with a sale!

Learn to make the painted fabrics in this project in my mini-Whimsy class at IQF-International Quilt Festival Fall 2014.   This piece was made (in part) with the Queen Anne’s Lace thermofax screen at Fiber on a Whim.

The collaboration began when Fiber on a Whim asked if I would like to do a mini class in their booth at Festival.  At International Quilt Festival I will be teaching regular classes (Intro to Machine Quilting, Birch Pond Seasons, particpating in the Machine Quilting Forum and giving a lecture on Tuesday), but I will also be doing two mini Whimsy Classes in the Fiber on a Whim booth #144 on the show floor on Thursday at 5 and Friday at 11. I’d love to see you in both the regular and the Whimsy classes!  The Whimsy classes (both the same)  will use thermofax screens and other paint processes to create your own cloth.  The booth is on “Main Street” (the big red-carpeted aisle in the middle) right next to the passageway/entrance to the quilts exhibits!  Read more about FoaWhim’s Festival plans here on their blog.

In the class I hope to have students do two small projects each.  In the class, students will create the Queen Anne’s lace background fabric used in this project along with the painted part of the nest, then finish the stitchery and quilting at home.  I will provide the materials you need in class, you add the rest at home.  Just show up, pay for the class (a very modest fee that covers supply costs), and play!  There will only be 8 spaces per class; stay tuned for details but I think you just need to show up about 15 minutes before class and the first 8 people in line get in to the classes.

The Queen Anne’s Lace custom stencil, which you can purchase from Fiber on a Whim not only at International Quilt Festival but also on their website is this one, which has the flower head in three sizes on a 9 x 12 inch screen.  (PS–did you remember all my screens are on sale right now?)  You can print with just a single size or use all three (or portions):

My custom Queen Anne’s Lace screen that will be available from Fiber on a Whim, probably on their website later this week.

I will also have students work on a piece of art cloth to make something along the lines of the piece below, which uses my Onions thermofax screen (I’ll post more about the screens once Fiber on a Whim is ready to sell).  This was like fingerpainting in kindergarten–pure play–but with cloth!

And some art cloth–this is SO not my typical, but I could see playing with surface design, a lot, to make more fabrics to use in my more typical style. I wanted to have something totally “not me” though so that students get to try both representational and not!

Here are a few more images so you get the idea of what we will be doing–do come play!

For the nest piece, I took some pale beige batik, my Queen Anne’s Lace stencil and paint to create this cloth, which I love so much I can see making yardage of this to use!

My onion screen will also be available at Fiber on a Whim. I simply overlapped it a bunch of times to create this cloth, again something that I can see using as background fabrics. And what a variety you’d get depending on your base cloth (this was plain white) and colors.  This was layers 1 and 2 in the red-black-white piece.

Hope you’re intrigued.  Personally, I want to go play with paint and cloth!

Playing with the Stillman and Birn paper samples.  Pens and pencils I used in my test are to the left.

First up:  my apologies–this post got REALLY LONG.  But I have a feeling I may be referring people to it so wanted ALL the info in one blogpost.  So here goes:   many moons ago, the generous folks at Stillman and Birn sent me a sample pack of their six papers because I didn’t know what to order in a sketchbook, and the sketchbooks aren’t exactly inexpensive so I didn’t want to buy six.   I decided to do a controlled test on the samples using various pens, pencils, inks and watercolors.  The paper comes in two weights:  100 lb and 180 lb, two colors: white and ivory, and three finishes:  vellum, cold press, and smooth.  Vellum is a velvety finish (not like drafting vellum which is like a heavy duty tracing paper); smooth is comparable to hot press.  Here’s the S&B information:

Stillman and Birn chart with the differences in the papers (alpha through Zeta). Paper specs are on the S&B site here.

And some useful links:

• Stillman & Birn website
• Dick Blick offers S&B sketchbooks here and here.
• Binders Art Supply in Atlanta carries the sketchbooks AND the paper!!!!  Awesome customer service (see below)
• Goulet Pens has great fountain pens, a massive selection of inks, a billion instructional / informational videos and (DRUM ROLL of epic proportions please) they sell SAMPLES of the inks.  You can get about two cartridges worth out of each sample…so I have ordered and used about TWENTY samples.  But that is a separate blogpost for later.
• Online classes with Val Webb, probably the best art teacher I’ve ever had; she helps all of her students achieve more than we could ever dream!
• Online classes at Sketchbook Skool with Danny Gregory, Koosje Koene and various guest teachers

Here’s a photo of the six pieces of paper in my Stillman & Birn sample pack:

The six papers from Stillman and Birn.  I’ve put on the back the name of the paper, weight, finish, and the ink used (Noodler’s Lexington Grey).  Top row is 100-lb, bottom row is heavier 180-lb.

Here I’ve got the paper criss crossed with the 100 weight on top so you can see the effect of very wet watercolor on it and the show-through (or lack thereof).  For lighter weight paper, the lack of ghosting and bleed through is good.

Another view of just the 100-lb papers while still damp (the ones on the right) from watercolor

Here are close-ups of each of the six papers showing how my favorite pens and pencils behave on each offering:

Still wet! Alpha series 100-lb. Vellum surface.  You can see that I did the “evil” test with LOTS of soupy watercolor to see how far you can push this paper.  The answer:  a long way!  I did find that for me the Vellum surface papers were a bit “skittery” with the extra fine Pitt Artists pens, which I didn’t enjoy.  Personally I preferred the Epsilon (below), but that is totally a matter of what each person likes.

Close-ups of the various papers.  This is the white Beta series, a cold-press finish sized for multi-media

Gamma Paper, 100-lb Ivory, Vellum finish

Delta Series, Ivory, heavier weight 180-lb paper.  Suitable for very wet media.

Epsilon:  this ended up being my favorite because of both the surface and the fact that you get more pages per sketchbook.  If I were endlessly wealthy, I might (or might not) choose the Zeta.  But since many of my pages do not use heavy water, I chose Epsilon knowing full well I could end up with some buckling.

Zeta paper.  White, smooth finished.  Suitable for wet media and more.

I’m just finishing up my first S&B sketchbook, an Epsilon 7 x 10 wirebound.   I LOVE IT!  So much that I ordered some individual sheets to customize my sketchbook for my trip to England.   Before that though, here are some sample pages from my Epsilon sketchbook so you can see how it handled various media.

Epsilon 7 x 10 sketchbook, pencil on left page. Charcoal pencil and water on right page with white charcoal pencil. Exercises from a **fantastic** online class with Val Webb.

My rudimentary watercolor, from the first two lessons at Danny Gregory’s Sketchbook Skool. Pen and ink with watercolor. The heavier usage on the left ripples a bit, but I’m ok with that. And I could, quite honestly, iron it flatter if I wanted to!

More lessons from Val Webb (cats in pencil) and a portrait of artist and Sketchbook Skool teacher Tommy Kane from a screen capture image from one of the videos in the Sketchbook Skool class. Done in Pitt Artists pens S and XS. I roughed in the general shapes with pencil, inked, erased with kneaded eraser, then filled in and stippled and cross-hatched. Excellent paper! 

I also got lucky:  I emailed Stillman and Birn  (they are SO responsive!) to ask if they had ever considered making a “sampler sketchbook” as the samples were small, but I didn’t want to buy six sketchbooks!   Turns out they had, but they didn’t sell well so won’t be making more of these samplers.  The guy told me that Binders in Atlanta might still have some, so I called them up a couple months ago since none of the sampler sketchbooks were listed on the website.  The nice lady at Binders (which also has OUTSTANDING customer service) went to look in the shop as the computer showed they had four left.  I bought three of them, two as gifts, one to use myself.

Contact info on the inside cover of my Stillman & Birn sampler sketchbook–alas these are no longer made!

The sampler sketchbooks are the small size (6 x 8 ish, with 5 1/2 inches of usable width on the page) with four sheets/eight pages of each of the six papers.  Sometimes I like wide–enjoyed the format of a Moleskine accordion fold, but not that paper.  .  So I bought some of the Epsilon and Zeta paper sheets and make myself some 2-page and some  accordion fold “extensions” to tape into this journal in the sections I’ve reserved for art.  I’m not as fond of ivory paper, so I used the vellum ivory Gamma pages to write down essential information for my upcoming trip:  lodgings, emergency contact numbers for insurance, lost credit cards etc.  I’ll do some watercolor washes on the Delta cold press and may use that for both watercolor and collaging in trip ephemera.  The Alpha pages will be for my trip “calendar.” The Beta, Zeta and Epsilon pages will be for artwork.

I made a few “page extensions” (the size of 2 sheets) and a few “accordion or Z-fold” extensions to add to my book should I feel the urge to do a really wide landscape or a funky train-journey thing.  I purchased individual sheets of both the Epsilon and Zeta paper, then cut and folded these extensions.  I’ll take some glue or tape to affix them if I decide to use them on my trip.  This is my work-around to not wanting to make a complete journal on my own and them not having the exact thing I want–just modify!

And using more of the single sheets of paper I’m going to draw a map and then illustrate it as the journey progresses.  I’ve cut it to about 11 x 14 inches so I can glue one corner to the inside cover for opening out easily.  On the last page, I’m taping in a printed-out map, also that can be folded up nicely.

Taped in printed-out map of about half of England, folded, glued to last page in sketchbook.

Opened up printed map.

Then my hand-drawn illustrated map will be taped/glued to the inside of the back cover.  With the wire-bound, there is enough room to add these extra pages without having the rigid covers “splay out” much if at all.

So thank you if you’ve manged to read through this massive tome!   Really loving my Stillman and Birn, as well as great classes from Val Webb and in the Sketchbook Skool, and the fabulous customer service and responsiveness from S&B, Goulet Pens and Binders.