New American Made Brand Fabrics

I recently had the pleasure to play with some new fabric by American Made Brand. This line of fabric is a gorgeous quality, solid colored line that is grown and made right in the USA. It can't get better than that!

There are three new fabrics coming out and they are perfect for all that I do. But then again, the solid colors they offer are perfect too, because they are the ones that I screen print my own designs onto. But, if you happen to be a dyer and printer and want something that is ready to design with, then you will like the new offerings.

The three new fabrics are:

1. AMB PFP cotton is fabric Prepared for Printing.  Fabric is free of finishing and treated in a way to let inks immerse the fibers in color during the printing process.  For the tech-savvy artist wanting to transform their digital creations into fabric works of art!
2. AMB PFD cotton is fabric Prepared for Dyeing.  No starches, sizing, or finishes applied to the fabric, allowing dyes and paints to saturate the fibers.  Perfect for dyeing, batiking, fabric painting, block printing, and all types of textile art media.  Let this fabric serve as a blank canvas to unleash your inner Picasso!
3. AMB Natural Muslin

Here is what I did with my piece of PFD cotton. 

I first dyed the PFD cotton with an orange fiber reactive dye. The color came out brilliant and gorgeous. Next I used textile paint to add some stenciled leaves to the surface. 

I decided to split my piece of PFP fabric in two so I could print two designs on it. For the first design shown, I used one of my Thermofax screen designs, another leaf design, and screened an avocado green color over the surface.

For the other piece of PFP fabric, I used one of my compressed sponge shapes. Yes, another leaf design (I must have been in a leafy mood). I sponged on textile paint in a teal color.

And for the final fabric, the natural muslin, I again used a Thermofax screen to create a fabric that has a stripe pattern.

Once the four pieces of fabric were finished I pulled some of my other printed AMB fabrics from my stash and created a small collection.

This collection called to me to make something so I decided to create a small quilt. I made an improv quilt block with a wonky plus design and then repeated the same block in a smaller size for the border.

I am very impressed that AMB has added these new fabrics to their line. I love using the AMB solids with my screen printing and now I can add these new fabrics to my stash so I can have an even larger variety of options when I want to create unique and original fabrics for my projects.

If you would like to see more of these fabrics and other AMB solids that are available, please visit:

American Made Brand fabrics is found on the web here, http://americanmadebrand.com/.

American Made Brand fabric is a division of Clothworks, http://www.clothworks.com. 

As always, thanks for stopping by and visiting. Please leave a comment if you have any questions.

Discharge Printing

Remember the other day when I showed you the compressed sponge shapes I had cut?  Well, here is what I did with them.  So. far.

One day this past week I got together with friends and we had a discharge party. It was so much fun that I did some more the next day by myself at home.

This was the first time I had really gotten into discharging fabric to this extent. I had tried a piece here or there over the years. Lately, though, I had really been wanting to do more with it. I have quite a stash of hand dyed fabrics that I wanted to play with, some dyed a single color and some overdyed.

I found there to be a slight learning curve with the discharge printing. We used bleach mixed with monagum thickener. I found a thicker mixture worked best for the sponge applications. This first piece shown was my first attempt and my mixture was too thin. The thinner the mixture, the more moisture spread on the fabric and then you sort of lose the details of your design.

The fabrics shown are not all the ones that I did, but I think these are the ones that turned out best. Another thing that affects the outcome of this process is how long you leave the bleach mixture on the fabric. The longer it is on the lighter/whiter the designs become. So it is sort of a guessing game as to when to dunk the fabric into the rinsing buckets. For the most part I was able to stop the bleaching action at a point where I wanted, but sometimes not.

Another factor that is fun in this process is you don't know for sure what colors will show when the bleaching action starts. At least that is how it is for me, since I don't keep track of what colors I originally dyed the fabric with and some colors discharge differently than others.

I will be doing some more of this in the near future. This will be a summer activity for me because I don't like to use the bleach in the house. I don't want the smell in the house and my curious cats don't need to get into it.

One other thing that I want to try the compressed sponge shapes for is dyeing fabric with Color Magnet. Ohhhhhhh, can't wait!!!!!

Compressed Sponge

I was inspired, by a video by Lisa Walton, to purchase some compressed sponge material. To view Lisa's video, click here.  I just loved Lisa's results and since I love to create surface patterns on fabric, I figured I would enjoy this technique. And guess what? I did enjoy it.....very much.

I cut some sponge shapes and here they are. I still have more compressed sponge left over and I think I will go cut some more shapes as soon as I post this.

I will share with you, soon, what I did with my sponge shapes.