bird challenge - Lynn Krawczyk

Blue Line
Lynn Krawczyk

I chose the theme for this challenge and it wasn’t a difficult thing for me to choose Birds.

Its a combination of my love for the little fellows and my intense desire for winter to be done with us. Spring, please.

My favorite bird imagery is birds on a wire. There’s something very romantic about the silhouette of a small bird, high on a single line against the vast sky.

Thrills me every time.


I started my piece with some soy wax batik fabric. I stamped the fabric with a wood batik block I found at a flea market and then did a wash over it with watered down black dye-na-flow. The effect reminds me of the variation in the colors of the sky depending on the time of day and the season.

I wanted to experiment with the stitching on this piece. I am a loud and proud hand stitcher but when I thought of this piece, I wanted really tight long vertical lines. What I had in mind could best be accomplished with machine stitching.


I decided to do the stitching before I printed the imagery. I used two different thermofax screens to print the birds. The smaller scale birds are done in black and the larger birds are white and the one single line of blue.

I particularly like how stitching first broke up the screen printed images, making it feel more daydream, produced more shadows. I think its something that I will do more of.

Birds of a feather

I have a beautiful blue feather that was calling out to me when the topic was chosen. I have been playing with Inktense pencils so I drew the feather on freezer paper backed fabric and colored it in with the pencils. I used fabric medium to wet the pencil marks and the colors came to life. Then I freehand quilted the feather and appliqued it to a fused collage background. I like weird outside edges and I love the technique of zig-zagging a binding. It all came together very quickly and I am happy with the results.
Here you can see the blending of colors from the pencils and the quilting.

New Word for June 1 reveal

Spring sounds so trite........but it is so on our minds as we all start to recover from what was for most of us a hard winter.  Here in Northern California we just emerged from 21 straight days of rain. Unusual for us for sure. So I looked up "spring".  It has some other meanings that are also fun.


the first stage and freshest period: the spring of life.



a source or fountainhead of something: a spring of inspiration.


an elastic or bouncing quality: There is a spring in his walk.

a leap, jump, or bound.

Do have fun...........that's what it is all about!

Beauty of birds

Here is my version of this challenge.  I am lucky enough to live where I can look at birds in flight all day long if I wish.  The primary feeling I wanted to demonstrate was both the simplicity and the grace of a bird  in flight. The lines are smooth and graceful. Gliding is the best. So here it is.......in abstract, but here it is. Thanks for a great "word". It is my turn to post a word and I will do it from work today....

BIRD CHALLENGE

Well, it's April 1st, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we have made.

I hope I haven't gone too far around the bend on this one, but the first thought that popped to mind for "bird" was a woman I admired for her work in ecology and the spreading of wildflowers across the US. I'm thinking, of course, of LadyBird Johnson.

I studied many on-line photos of her, and modeled my image on several from her later life. I knew she always tried to wear bright colors, so I gave her a dress made from Kaffe Fasett fabric with a big flower as a collar, a red silk hat, and set her among as many pieces of floral fabric as I could squeeze onto our 11 x 17" format.

I had fun making "LadyBird."

Sue Walen

Pythagoras Unbound

In this piece, the standard square-in-a-square image used to illustrate the Pythagorean Theorem explodes in three steps. Two colorful cotton fabrics were fused and cut apart using pinking shears. The background was machine quilted in a wavy grid and the edges left raw - a wide zigzag holding the three layering together. Construction mirrors the free, unrestrained, playfulness of the subject matter. And so the change in perspective from precise to silly.

Good Art Among Us

I just posted a print copy of Jane Dunnewold's lecture for Form-Not-Function. It is well researched and thought provoking.
Go to http://www.artjourneys.blogspot.com to read this great piece.

Cathy Ortelle