The foundation of it all

I have decided, whilst I have been sick, to start a new project to help me stay organised.
I'm calling it my Textile and Mixed Media Sampler Project.  Or TAMMS for short.  Some people may remember that I started my blog to keep me on track with my art.  As usual, I started with good intentions, but got distracted along the way, as you do.
Each month I am going to post about different categories of Textile and Mixed media techniques.  I have broken the techniques up into categories and I will have one post on a technique in each category per month.  I will also link to previos posts on techniques that are relevant.

The categories are:
Foundations - the base I start work on
Fabrics and textiles - the stuff I use
Surface design - What I do to the surface of my media
Fabric manipulation - the way the media are changed to create dimension and texture
Embellishments - The little bits that decorate the work
Machine work - including free machine work and other sewing
Hand work - Embroidery and couching and such
Finishing - The way that the piece is displayed
Design - elements and principles that go into a piece of work

Each month I will use what I have made to create one or more collages and journal quilts.
At the same time, I am putting all this into an interactive database with pictures, reference and some videos, so that when I am finished, I will have a wonderful resource.

Anyone out there can contribute to the project, on my facebook group, Fibre art and free machine embroidery., which I originally set up to host tutorials, but haven't done so, yet.  The page is open for anyone, but I do not want any advertising or politics, please.

There are no rules as such, and no committment to producing anything (except for me of course), but your contributions and examples of your samples are welcome.

I planned to begin on the first of November, but what's a week anyway, so here is my first post on,

Foundations.

This month's foundation is painted batting.  Batting scraps are something we all have and paints of one kind or another are usually about or easily obtained.
I have also monoprinted on batting here.

Here is my piece of batting, about 9 inches square, rinsed in water and wrung out before starting.

For this sample I am using watered down acrylics in bingo marker/dabber bottles, but fabric paint (I would not use watercolour) could be used and a little sponge to dab the paint on would work fine.

I started with purple, dabbing it on the smoothed out batting.

Then I kept going with the other colours.  Although I overlapped the colours, I tended to keep each colour in a particular area as you can see.

Then I scrunched up the batting and rolled it around to blend the paint a little.

This is after rolling it around.  on the left is the scrim side (most batting has a very light non woven on one side which the fibre is needle felted into, this is called scrim) and on the right is the other side, which has blended nicely.  I even like the way there are white areas, where it was not totally wet in the initial dousing.

Here it is after drying.  I can be very impatient, so I ironed it between two piees of my fabric for dyeing, and it left nice little pale dots of colout all over the cloth.  Two for one!  You will notice, that I have opted for a more subtle colouring than what I began with.  This is why I used damp fabric, to allow the paint to spread and move and thereby become more what I would like a foundation to be.  This is the base layer, which may or may not be seen in a finished piece, so needs to be less vibrant.
There are probably as many ways to paint batting as there are bloggers out there, so make it your own and do it your way.
Sorry about my photos today, they seem a little more blurry than usual.  I will have to check the camera.

So that is my first post on FAMMS.  I must tell you I do not have any finished piece in mind at present, but one will occur to me over the next few weeks, I'm sure.  Have a go and post your batting picture in the group, or not, it's up to you, but-

BE happy creating whatever you do.