This feels like a week to be reaching for the stars. I have returned to this work-in-progress in the studio with enthusiasm and hope.

When it’s done, this work will be an homage to the suffragists of the early 20th century, whose work helped to get us here. For now, I’m in the fabric-creation stage and I’m dealing with the stars.

There will be a field of blue and a field of red. I want stars, but not white stars. My vision is for a hue- on-hue effect; royal blue stars on a dark navy blue background, and red-red stars on a deeper red background.

I decided to create these as resist prints using wheat paste. I’ll roll the wheat paste onto the stencils with a paint roller, creating the shapes I want to see on the final product. Then overpaint with the darker background color so the lighter shows through, after the wheat paste is washed off.

Here’s how it looked in progress:

First I painted about a yard and a half of each fabric: just solid color. A yard and a half of royal blue, and a yard and a half of red-red. (Cadmium red.)

Then, I cut stencils of stars and rolled in the wheat paste. At this stage, it looks like white stars on red or blue background. I let his  yardage dry overnight till the resist is fully dry and crunchy.

Now it’s time to overpaint.

Here’s the red fabric: solid cadmium underneath, with wheat paste stars in between, and a deeper red sponge painted over the hole surface, hanging on the fence to dry

Here’s a closeup of both the blue and red fabrics at the same stage. On the blue piece, you can see the royal blue under-layer, and you can see the outline of the printed stars, and you can see the darker navy blue paint over all of that.

Once the over layer of dark paint was dry, I dunked the yardage in a bucket of warm water to dissolve the wheat paste. To remove the paste, I spread the fabric out on my worktable and scrape it off with a spoon, then dunk it some more, then finally take it outdoors to wash off with the jet setting on my garden hose.

The result: blue on blue and red on red.

And now those fabrics are ready to collage into the finished piece.

Learning experience: Wheat paste is wet and goopy. It will destroy a card stock stencil pretty quickly. (I had not remembered this before I started, and I cut new stencils, not preserving them with medium before printing.) By the end of printing the blue, my stencil was mush. So, I quickly cut new stars to print the red. That turned out to be a happy accident. On the stencil I cut for the red I just drew freehand stars, a lot looser and less symmetrical than the blue. This worked out well, since the red fabric goes on the flowing flag and actually should be rendered with a bit of skew. I lucked out!

Another learning experience; Why didn’t I just print light colors on top of a darker fabric and avoid the whole resist process? Because the acrylic paint is not completely opaque. The darker underneath color would have distorted the over color. Only the addition of white creates opacity, and I didn’t want white in the final product.

More to come with this work in weeks ahead.

And now - oh boy! - one last chance to promote the FRESH FISH book

 The special promo ends February 1. It’s been such a pleasure to be part of this project and to design the book. SAQA is promoting it through the SAQA store for a SPECIAL PRICE of $15.95 each with FREE shipping. (With regrets, the free shipping special can only be for residents of the contiguous United States.) The book sales benefit SAQA Florida exhibits and programs. And (well, I’m biased) I think it’s a book you’ll really enjoy reading. The textile artwork and poetry complement each other wonderfully. To order the promo, order here www.saqa.com/freshfish

Your book should arrive about mid-February. If you want a book sooner, or if you live outside the contiguous United States, you can order on Amazon HERE

Thank you for reading. I always enjoy questions and comments.
--Bobbi
bobbi@bobbibaughstudio.com

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