Melanie Testa

Unicorn

Piecing Unicorn Prints!

I really could not be happier. Last year, I printed gads of cloth. While my new color triangle is not yet complete, I do have Unicorn Feather Prints, Fleur de Lis Prints,Unicorn Prints and more fabrics to be cut and pieced.  I  love making  quilt tops  from my handprints.

During holiday break, I cut Fleur de Lis fabrics for a Mini Double Wedding Ring quilt top and a mixture of Feather Prints and Fleur de Lis prints in Drunkards Path. On the horizon, I will be cutting down more Unicorn Prints for a Florrid Bloom quilt top that I have deemed, ‘too small’.

In the meantime, I have found out that Double Wedding Ring blocks take great care and attention, while Drunkards Path blocks are quick, fun and um, addictive. 🙂

I do need to substitute in one semisolid single color print, and one new unrelated print, in order to have a rectangles worth of Drunkards Path blocks.

So, you can see I went for a textured yellow. You will need to wait to see what print I subbed in! Please stay tuned! Also, Happy Holidays! I hope yours were fun, you ate good food, hugged good people and did good things!

I am excited, because I await the shipment of a new sewing machine table! Gratitude!!!

And hey! I discuss these prints in my new offering, Motif Maker’s Zine. Get your copy today!!

Prancing Unicorns for sale!

Textile design and motif making are my absolute favorite things to do. While my latest book, Playful Fabric Printing, illuminates how to go about printing in full detail and using many differing tools, it’s focus is more about the tools you need to use -to make- a print. This is why I have begun the Motif Maker’s Zine. 

Within the pages of the zine, I discuss and unpack how to make your own motifs, how to gather similar ideas together to create a collection of motifs, and also how to use texture and patterning to bring sparkle and depth to your drawn imagery. 

Unicorns, it turns out, are ripe and ready for interpretation as a motif. I had little idea how much lore and fantasy surround unicorns. But once I began researching them, I fell in love with them. For instance, why, when entering a forest of known unicorn habitation, must you carry pinking sheers? What do soft serve ice cream or gumball machines have to do with unicorns? hmmm.

The zine format allows me to discuss this extensive research with you! Each zine is 16 pages, is hand drawn and illustrated and each has a beautiful centerfold. This is a creative jumpstart for the home studio and surface design artist!

This deep dive into motif making spurred the creation of hand printed hankies, unicorn T-shirts, prints and more. I am hoping you might gift yourself some Melly made items today! Please check out my Etsy!

Again, again.

A little more than a month ago, I had an exercise accident that derailed my blogging efforts! It certainly took me off my feet! I tore my right calf muscle. I couldn’t walk for close to two weeks! It slowed my art making down, it spiraled into taking a break from everything in my life.

But!! It can’t be all bad! My birthday came around (it’s a big one, 5-0), and… I got a pair of Purple Moxi Lolli roller skates! I know! How does one go from leg injury to roller skating? I assure you, it makes sense to me!

I have been printing too! I have 12 of 28 new colors swatched, in all four values, and I am in the midst of printing my newest multicolor print sets. When I am finished swatching the entire color triangle, I am going to have a boat load of new fabrics to begin piecing quilt tops! Please, check out my art insta, to see many recent prints from all of these groupings.

These will be small quilts, as I am printing just 27 fat sixteenths with each grouping of three colors mixed. This isn’t a lot of fabric, each collection will need to be paired with commercial, low volume or single color prints. And, well, that’s exciting!

I will leave you with a photograph of my Man and I, celebrating during my birthday weekend. I am grateful to be me, 50, a goofball artist and fitness enthusiast, who wants to dance roller skate! I am glad you are here and interested in my shenanigans too. 

Sometimes Lessons are Re-learned

Over and over again!

This week, I continue the journey of swatching a new color triangle, while also printing my most recent textile designs. I have chosen three colors and mixed them in all four gradations. The scissor print you see here is a three color design. The scissor layer was printed using Thermofax screen print, The background and the coloring of the scissors are done by way of fun foam stamps.

As I had mixed three colors, I printed 9 scissor layers in each of the Dark values, so that I can then print 3 Pale backgrounds, 3 Light backgrounds and 3 Medium backgroaunds each, before beginning to print the third and final color. BUT. I forgot to label the ‘Top’ of the Thermofax scissor layer and I ended up flipping the layer over and printing the repeat backward on 6 of the yellow/orange coloration. My fun foam stamps cannot print backward. Ouch. 

So, I labeled the Thermofax screen, mixed some additional yellow/orange and I am about to replace the backward prints. Don’t worry, I will be able to use the backward prints! All is not lost, I just can’t color them with the stamps I have created for the purpose. 

I am giving Live updates about this project in our FB Community group by the same name, Playful Fabric Printing. Please join us there!

Zine Volume 2, possible covers

I have just finished printing four possible covers for The Motif Maker’s Zine volume #2, a zine focused the Unicorn, as motif. In an upcoming post, I will share two quilt tops that feature Unicorn prints derived from the this same collection of prints.

In the meantime, here are two printed hankies for you viewing pleasure.

Stay tuned!

Zine Making, what? why?

A Zine is a short & sweet version of a magazine. This printed material is often made by individuals, be they artists, activists, enthusiasts, fans or groups. These booklets are traditionally created by way of photocopy machines, an easily accessible and generally inexpensive means of printing.
On March 31 of this year, I went to a Feminist Zine Festival held at Bernard College in NYC. The Zines at this event ranged from 4-12$, more or less. I was so excited about what I might learn and whose Zines I would collect, I arrived early.

I am glad that I did because I was able to nab the brightly colored Zine named ‘Making Your Mark’ at upper right, in the photo above. That Zine is subtitled, ‘Women, Queer & Gender Non-Conforming Tattoo Artists in their Own Words’. It was printed under then Diaspora Savant Press. But I purchased Zines from many interesting people on topics like body positivity, breast cancer, trans poetry, and penpal Zines for incarcerated women and gender non-conforming people.

Then, I got bit by the bug!

I buckled down and began creating a Zine of my own, and I am calling it, The Motif Maker’s Zine.

Of course my Zine needs to be an artful exploration of motif, textile design and printing. I am drawing and lettering the entire Zine myself and I plan to release three at once, ASAP. I have two Zines complete and have started a third! I find I like communicating by way of drawings and written word. I like the format and I hope you do too.

So, please stay tuned. This will be fun.

 

Motif Making

I have been skittering down a rabbit hole of exploration into Motif Making. Its been fun. Check out my insta to see a fuller picture of this print and it’s fellas.

I am creating a Zine, an artistic, hand written and printed offering, called the Motif Maker’s Zine. These will be 16 page booklets that speak to how to make and use motif in your printed work.

And, while I do that, I am printing hankies using the motifs discussed in the Zine! I hope to get all of this into my Etsy really soon!

In the meantime, I am updating this website, simplifying it, and learning to maintain it myself. I have been disheartened by social media and look forward to occupying this space again.

My life has been morphing and shifting. I am studying to become a personal trainer! I love working out and I would like to get an additional Special Populations certification, so that I can work with cancer patients who want to engage in fitness.

I have broken up my Instagram accounts! I now have an Melly Testa artist insta, my breast cancer advocacy insta and my Flat_and_Fit insta. Please follow me there!

And hello. It feels good to use this space again.