Twice a year since 2010, I’ve made the category award ribbons for a major regional art festival. No other festival boasts anything like our awards.
The Tempe Festival of the Arts opens from December 6 – 8, 2019. This season, the Featured Artist is Arizona’s own Jackson Ocheltree, who crafts gorgeous pieces using lampworked glass, lapidary, and metalsmithing techniques from his studio near Nogales.
Check out his blog From The Ground Up, for some of the little miracles Jackson creates.
When the Festival committee let me know the Featured Artist, I was stumped for an hour or two. I usually riff off the chosen artist and/or poster for the 27 Festival award ribbons.
How do you reference lost-wax cast silver and shimmering dichroic glass in flat fabric?
It’s tricky.
A technique from art quilters led me to using cotton batik fabric plus translucent and transparent layers of stacked green, purple, and iridescent blue polyester/rayon sheers, all machine-appliqued down on a dark purple cotton background.
Above, you see the purple cotton duck, cotton batik, iridescent blue under translucent lavender burn-out sheer, shimmery green-gold polyester/cotton, thread details, and glass beads. Layering purple over the iridescent blue cuts out some of the obnoxious brilliance of the blue fabric, and highlights the subtle pattern in the lavender burn-out fabric.
I sewed hundreds of iridescent glass beads over the starburst design for extra glitter. My favorite ‘peekaboo’ edging wraps the felt substrate with purple and green batik fabric. Front fabrics are simply zig-zag stitched down and frayed out for an organic textured edge. The ribbons were finished with royal-blue ribbon ties and pin-backs, plus my signature and date on the purple-gray backing.
I refer to these as my ‘Elsa’ ribbons, because the wintry Aurora Borealis colors seem to echo Disney’s ‘Frozen’ mythic heroine, and to honor the names of the two talented women whose bead stashes I was able to purchase this last year.
As always, I learn so much from making these ribbons. I’ll be using the shimmery rainbow fabric double-layer trick on an upcoming landscape themed pop-up cloth book.
Sourcing: some sewing thread, ribbon ties, and iridescent blue-green sheer fabrics were purchased at a local SAS fabrics-by-the-pound warehouse. Pin-backs are from an online craft store. More thread came from JoAnn Fabrics. Three different batik patterns came from 35th Avenue Sew-n-Vac, which also sells a vast array of quilting fabrics. The lavender burn-out sheer began as a Coldwater Creek shirt found at Goodwill, and the white felt substrate and dark purple cotton duck are other Goodwill yardage finds.
I use good-quality recycled fabrics whenever possible on my award ribbons, tapestries, and cloth book art projects.
So much great fabric otherwise goes into a landfill!
I get a kick of hearing that artists collect these awards and often frame them.
We added pin-backs and ribbon ties for easy attachment to booth drapes and poles…but it turns out, that’s handy for artists to wear these like ties at the festival itself!
The category labels, Festival logo, and date tags are laser-printed then gel-transferred onto white-on-white printed cotton fabric, using Matte Mod-Podge. I used to print this text directly onto costly ‘printable’ cotton fabric, but it always came out slightly blurry.
Gel-transfer images are crisp and clear, preserving most of the ‘hand-feel’ of fabric, with the matte-finish cutting out some of the ‘plastic’ glare that might otherwise show up. White-on-white patterns (or any light colored cotton fabric) add interest underneath the text.
Even when (and if) I get an embroidery machine, gel-transfer will remain a useful tool in my fiber art.
If you are in central Arizona during Festival time, I urge you to come to Tempe. The artwork is incredible, with treasures at every price point.
It’s worth it just for the show. Especially this year: I drove through at night to drop off the ribbons, and the trees along Mill Avenue are lit up up just like these ribbons.
Thanks for enduring a really long post about pretty fabric.