New Silk/Metal Fabric on Sale!

We have recently added sheer fabrics woven from real metal and shimmering silk threads and are offering them — available in 10 colors as well as in sampler packs — on sale for 15% off for a limited time.

The organza-like metal fabric is soft and fine, very easy to sew through or manipulate. It is sold per luscious color in fat quarter (18" x 22") units, and in sampler packs that include sheets of all 10 colors: small (5½" x 9") and large (9½" x 11½").

Use this shimmering textile to embellish art quilts, add to your mixed media art, or incorporate into art jewelry, as Artistic Artifacts owner Judy Gula is doing with the fabric beads pictured here. These handmade and handbeaded beauties will be incorporated into one of her fabulous necklaces. (Please note: our photographs cannot do these rare imported textiles justice!)

Gorgeous Graphic Fabric Panels

We have updated the Batik Tambal section of our store with brightly colored batik panels by the batik artist Arifin. These vibrant colors and graphic abstract images are not your typical batik! We can bet he will find some new fiber and mixed media fans...imagine these dynamic panels accented with stitching, beading or even found object embellishments!

A leader of a new generation of Indonesian batik artists, he expresses his subjects, many depicting musical instruments (as the saxophonist pictured here), abstractly by reversing the famous Javanese Batik method: he dyes his paintings from dark to bright colors, instead of the traditional bright to dark.

Mixed Media Metallics Challenge Open to All — Join Us!

Artistic Artifacts is holding a new challenge that will accept art quilts, collages, assemblages, jewelry: whatever medium you choose to work in! Our Mixed Media Metallics Challenge requires that your finished size be 8" x 10" and that you feature metal or metallic finishes in some way, but your imagination is otherwise free to roam. The deadline for your submissions is November 23. We hope you’ll participate! Visit our website to learn more about this challenge, get a sneak peak at a wonderful earlybird entry and download your entry form.

October Classes at Artistic Artifacts

Classes are a great way to stretch your comfort zone and experiment with products you might not yet be familiar with, or for learning new skills and techniques. Our wide variety of classes offers the following for the month of October:

• Saturday, October 12: Studio Tech Basics: Quilting with the Feed Dogs Down with Cyndi Souder — Learn the basics of free motion machine quilting.
• Also on Saturday, October 12: Collage Charm Necklace, with a Bit of Fabric with Judy Gula — create a one of a kind necklace and learn jewelry making techniques using your own chain, glass beads and charms, supplemented with fabric beads and connectors you’ll craft in class.
• Tuesday, October 15: Tag Book Bonanza with Diane Herbort — Transform humble shipping tags into beautiful collaged pages to assemble into an artful tag book or add to a journal, handmade cards or collage art.
• Saturday, October 19: Printing with Thermofax Screens with PG Fiber2Art — this popular class covers a variety of thermofax screen printing techniques; you’ll go home with a huge stash of printed fabric (and paper, if desired).
• Saturday, October 26: From Board Game to Book with Stacy Rausch — All supplies provided! Create a hand-bound notebook or art journal using traditional book binding methods and materials, recycling a game board for covers.