a heart and some plastic

 Oops, I forgot to post yesterday.   I am working very hard on a ton of things to get back into my routine and I am quite excited about some of the new ideas popping up.  My journal is getting quite full!

ATC is made with foil fused on fusible web on cotton fabric.  Free machine scribbling.

And another journal quilt.  This time made from the  plastic bags fused to cellofoil I made here.

I used red pearl cotton in the bobbin and sewed the spiral from the back (Bobbin drawing)

soldered leaves and ironed cellofoil

Synthetic scraps layered on cotton, covered with satin, stitched then soldered to reveal the scraps.  Satin stitched edging - yay! finally got it!
I will show you a bit more on this technique ina day or so.

I have a growing collection of cellofoil.  This is the plasticky foil that comes as candy wrappers, on crisp/chip packets and on rice cakes.  I use rice cakes, so these packets yield a large piece of cellofoil, whilst the candy wrappers, although colourful are very small.
I have been thinking of ways to use these in my mixed media, so the other day, I got experimenting.

This is cellofoil, with plastic bags (preironed to fusible)  ironed on top.  Since the plastic bags are very thin, and break up when you iron, the cellofoil peeps through and looks very nice.

This one has some painted fusible ironed on and it looks absolutely gorgeous.  My fingers are itching to use this sample.

This one has a painted nappy/diaper liner fused to it.  I used a sprinkle of fusible granules, only a tiny bit, to get it to fuse.  Since the liner is so thin, the metallic cellofoil is visible and looks lovely.
After I used the nappy liner, I went off on a whole other tangent with the liners, but I'll get to that in another post.
These pieces of cellofoil are certainly  going to feature in some of my pieces.  It's a great feeling when you have a successful experiment.  But all experiments are useful.

Perhaps not an utter failure

Thanks Gina, Renate and Caroline. 

Just to show you that I

1. do eventually get around to things
2. have projects that are failures

I have a little project to show you.
Way back in June, I designed this piece.

It has been sitting around, patiently waiting for me to play with it.

So got out my pattern and decided to make a little version, since the big one was not happening.  I traced the pattern onto acetate, so I could arrange things on my lutradur backing.

I added some water (A cotton fabric)

Rocks and more water in the foreground (more cotton).

Some more rocks and some more water (more cotton).

I tacked all these cotton fabrics down with a little free motion.

So far so good........

I added some cellofoil and sewed that down too.
I decided the rocks needed a few highlights and darks

 So I added some organza and satin.

Then a little more for the sea, with some ripped up nappy liners

And then more nappy liners

 I overdid the nappy liners because I know how they shrink to almost nothing...........

When you blast them with a heat gun!  So now you see why I used cotton on the underneath layers.
OOps! - too much nappy liner just turns into blobs.
I can see that getting the effect I got here

Requires a bit more experimentation. 
When I added little bits of nappy liner (and lots of cellofoil) I got a bubbly fluffy texture (above), but this time I used lots of nappy liner and not as much cellofoil.
In addition, this time I did not distress the cellofoil and nappy liner layers separately.
I could probably do some hand stitching to perhaps make something of this little piece,  however at this point, I will just set it aside and think on it again.

Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side of the hill.
But remember, all you have to do is get up and walk there!  It might take some time, but you'll get there.

Cellofoil and water

Today's blog is about Fabric manipulation,  in particular heat distressing plastic.
I seem to have lots of this.

It is the plasticky foil wrapper from a rice cake packet.  I decided to see what would happen if I zapped it with my heat gun and was pleasantly surprised.

It becomes molten and soft and forms ridges and pools.  I thought it looked a bit like the crests of waves.
In the picture above, I have free machined the flat areas to a piece of Lutradur.

Here is a close up of one of the ridges and the round, flat puddles.

I cut up some watery looking fabric to put in the "puddles"

Here i have placed one of these between some ridges.

I did a little bit of free motion over these watery bits.

Then placed some more watery bits down.

I ripped up some nappy liners and started adding them next to the silver ridges.

I added a bit of the nappy liner strips.

Then I added a whole lot more.  I melted the nappy liner with the heat gun, and..

..it turned into froth, just what  I wanted.  This sample needs a bit more free machining and perhaps even some more nappy liner, since it disappears almost to nothing except a few bubbles, but I am very pleased with this experiment and will be tweaking it a bit more, I think.
 

A thunderstorm is approaching very quickly, so I will post this now, before the power goes out.
Happy creating.