Heavenly Bodies

I finished another piece of art cloth today, called Heavenly Bodies. It's handwoven black cotton on black cotton on which I discharged the warp with bleach before putting it on the loom. The weaving pattern is an 8-shaft network twill.

The next step was to over-discharge big stencilled spirals, again with bleach.

Today I finished it off by printing on several colors of Lumiere textile paint with various objects and hand-cut stamps.

I'm really happy with it, and it does look to me like the heavens up close. So I guess you could say I've had a heavenly day!

And speaking of stamps, over the last several months I've cut stamps from a variety of media, including lino blocks, easy cut carving material, rubber gasket material and whatever else I could find. By far the easiest to cut and to use is the sticky-backed foam sheets that I adhere to thicker foam after the design is cut. That foam takes dye, paint and ink much more easily than the lino blocks (which at one time was all you could get to cut stamps with), and the foam base makes them extremely easy on the hands to press an impression with. That's just an FYI if you're into cutting your own stamps!