Our fiber art group had an art retreat the first weekend of September. We stayed at a lodge on Little Bitterroot Lake near Marion, Montana. It was a bit smokey this year due to wild fires but we still had loads of fun.

We started the weekend with deconstructed screen printing. I hadn’t made up any screens in advance since part of the group had never completed this part of the process.

This is a screen that Deb created with blue glue.

Here’s another screen with thickened dye.

Here are just a few of the results from the screen printing. We printed on paper and on fabric. We were using Procion MX Dyes so we didn’t print on any felt during this session.

Deb had agreed to show us her technique for making a cut and taped collage with some of the papers that we have printed, screen printed, gelli printed, eco printed over the last year. It was a neat method where the pieces were taped together and then sliced with a craft knife, re-positioned and taped back together again. The process is repeated many times.

Here’s Sally working on her eco printed papers. I didn’t get a photo of the final result but if you click on the photo on the right, I think you can see how the process works.

Louise created a collage using old photos. Hers was much smaller and was a bit more tricky than starting with larger pieces of paper.

This is Deb’s collage. She used screen printed papers that she made the day before. Normally, she would have squared up the edges and ended with a rectangular shaped piece. I encouraged her to leave the jagged edges and I really liked the end result on the right. She also made a companion “baby” piece with the leftover scraps but sadly I didn’t get a photo.

And here’s my piece. I used some of my dyed papers plus eco prints to create my collage. I have no idea what I’ll do with this. Perhaps I’ll cut it into smaller pieces and make greeting cards out of it.

We also did some gelli printing. Louise and Paula gelli printed feathers. They hadn’t tried that before and it was kind of cool. The larger white feathers seemed to be the most successful. You do the printing in layers, first apply the background colors and then add detail on top. I’m not sure what the plans are for the feathers but they turned out pretty cool.

Don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming online class that begins on October 6th. The class is Printing, Stenciling and Playing with Thickened Dye on Felt. Just go here to sign up and it’s only $45 for a 4 week course with loads of information.