tree and leaf

This ATC was hand needlefelted (background) on a piece of batting.  It took a bit of cogitation, but then I decided it needed a tree, so I stitched one. I finished with a very untidy blanket stitch,lol.

Since I was playing with the hand felting tool, I decided to make a leaf, but instead of batting or felt or anything solid, I felted it onto tulle.

Here it is.  You can just see the netting, which I can cut off or use a soldering iron to cut., but wait, there's more.
When I turned it over...

It had this really cool fur-like texture on the back where the fibers had been pushed through.  It reminds me of a possum's fur and is really soft.  Now I know this will come in handy.... when inspiration strikes.

something else I did a few days ago was to recover my journal.
Usually, I start with White glue and acrylic paint mixed together to both seal and cover the surface at the same time.  This time, I started with white paint and glue, but remembered an experiment I did a few weeks ago.

I had been reading about the different texture mediums being marketed and I thought "What if I just" so I mixed a few things with white glue and added them to my practice journal to see what would happen. 
From top left, clockwise they are - seed beads, herbal tea mixture, sawdust and glitter. 
I wasn't reall impressed with the beads, but perhaps even tinier ones might work?  The Tea mix was interesting and I liked the green tinge in the glue.  The sawdust was really great, and of course having a woodturner for a spouse means we have tons of that, lol.  The glitter was very transparent, but made a beautiful suface, so might be useful over something else.

So, back to the experiment at hand - I had painted my page with a white acrylic/PVA mixture, but decided it was a bit boring for a cover and just grabbed the leftovers from the above experiment at random.  They were unlabeled and in opaque tubs.

It turned out to be the herb tea mix, and I dabbed it all over the wet white paint/glue.  I liked it, but wondered whether the texture would be durable enough for a book cover.
In a moment of inspiration, I grabbed some tissue paper and covered over the pain, glue and tea. 

You can see above a close up of the texture, which reminds me of those expensive japanese papers.
The tissue folded in places and became almost translucent and it made a beautiful cover for the book.

 I was concerned that it would not be durable, but it is pretty solid now that it is totally dry.  I may just seal it with some PVA to make sure, but I haven't made up my mind yet whether I want to add some colour.  I have in mind some lovely watercolour dribbles that blend together.  I will just have to try that out in my practice book.  But I am very pleased with this old textbook which I use as a personal journal.

A bit to get through today!

Collage sampler

After watching Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson on Sewing with Nancy (here)the other day, I was inspired to do a few small collages.  In one of the segments, Laura made up a pattern sampler of nine small squares.  I started out making patterns with strips and such,

But it was not long before my little squares started to be pictures instead of patterns, lol.

Here are all the little squares up on a felt board.  I have a range of these felt boards, which are just a timber frame like for a stretched canvas, only I have lots of different sizes covered in felt for viewing work on before I make finishing decisions  I call them preview boards.  Sometimes, a black border can give you an idea of what a finished piece will look like.  In any case, I tend to mount my work on stretched canvas when it is finished, so it works for me.

Above, the boards range in size from 8 to 24" square and lots of rectangles in between.
Anyhow, back to the work at hand.
I will just go through each block and show you what I did whilst I was playing.

This one was pretty similar to one of LH's in the video,only I cut some bias strips with my curvy rotary cutter blade and put them in the centre of each leaf.  It looks pretty effective.

This was the next one and it started out as the purple rays on a green background, but I decided it was a bit boring, so I played around with splitting and layering the leaf shapes.

In this one I used bias strips to curve and make wavy lines.  As I was doing it, I thought about how it might look if I put little knots in like in tree bark.

After I cut the bits for the leaf centres earlier, I had a little triangle left with curvy edges.  I decided it looked like a sunflower petal, so I made some more, only this time I used the larger wave blade.

My next experiment was to use the curvy blades to make some water by layering different colours.  Then I added some grass and reeds.

Next, I thought I would make a tree.  A very bloody tree!  At this stage I cut myself with the rotary cutter - as you do!  I did not realise how much my finger was bleeding until I dripped it all over my tree! Yuk!  OH well, a bit of paint or embellishment will fix it.  And for easy identification 50 years from now, it has my DNA.
After a little break, I played with the wave blade and got these cute little leaves by lining up the blade so that the last cut met the first cut and did not stay an equal distance away (like in the leaf centres)  It took a while to get it right, but I had fun with it.

Then, I remembered that I had a scallop template in my quilting templates and I thought - "I wonder if I can make big leaves the same way, and guess what - I did, aren't they cute?

Whilst I was cutting the big leaves, I noticed the patterns the strips of leaves made as I cut them and so I made that pattern, too.  There are actually two patterns on this square.

While I was thinking about what to put in the last square, I happened to look at the scraps left from the tree's leaves and noticed how two of them together made a pine tree, so that became my last square for the sampler.
As you see, it doesn't take me long to get back to playing after a big day doing boring stuff.
Now on to lots of stitching and embellishment.

Creating silk paper and other fibre films Method 2 - Glue method Part 3

Creating silk paper and other fibre films 

Method 2 - Glue method Part 3

In this blog, you will see that not all experiments are created equal, sometimes they don't work.  This is why they are called experiments.  This one certainly stretched my predicting ability and I changed tack several times.  But in the end, even if the piece is not worth continuing with, there is still something to learn, so enjoy watching me struggle!

 

Here I have laid a cloth down and am adding leaves from a previous project, made from various fabrics.

Here are all the leaves laid down.

Top cover added.

Soapy water added - oops, too much.

 

Used a towel, to blot up all the water.  Well and truly wet now!

Rolled up the layers, which moved quite a bit (now, I know this was because the fabrics were too thick for this method)

Squeezed in diluted medium several times, which only resulted in moving more of the fabric about, because diluted medium is not strong enough for these fabrics

So, mark 2, I put all of the leaves on baking paper and painted with undiluted medium.  You need to paint both sides of the fabric, so it will bond to those already there.  That is, you need to begin adding medium from the first scrap, piece by piece!

Then I made the mistake of being in a hurry.  I tried ironing between the baking paper, but this affected the Medium and it created a film on top of the leaves.  Next time I will know not to do this - unless of course I am looking for a milky film for some reason.

This what the final piece looked like

Nothing is ever a waste of time in my laboratory lol.  The fabric is stiff, but stitcable (just).  And in working through this experiment, I have devised a few other ways to achieve this type of fibre film with fabrics that are a little thick in places. And I have thought of a few more combinations for the medium method as well - lucky you!

So expect to see these leaf scraps again in another episode.  (Much later!)

To dye another day

Today was dyeing day.  This is a day when I play with colour.

Someone asked me, why do I do these experiments with different techniques.  I do them as part of the art process.  I might not see the relevance of a particular texture or colour now, but the samples become a reference so that when I am working on a project, I can choose the technique that fits in with my theme or which makes most sense.  I suppose Icould go trawling the net for ideas, but this interrupts the creative process and nothing beats actually doing, seeing and feeling the end product myself.
Sometimes, an experiment with a technique will actually suggest a piece of work to me, so for me experimentation is the key.

Above are my basic tools.  Dye, Gloves, protective surface and dye.  I use Rit Dye because It is freely available and I loosely follow their low water immersion technique.

Here are a variety of fabrics, soaking in warm water prior to dyeing. They include hessian (the aqua fabric, also called burlap), scrim, cheesecloth, cotton and batting scraps (cotton and bamboo).

I use glass jars for my dyeing, these are around 500ml or 2 cups.  I use glass, because I find the microwave step tends to melt plastic, and glass washes clean after dyeing.

I am accurate in my measurements in that I only use a teaspoon of the dye powder in these jars.

I also usually start with the three primary colours, red, blue and yellow.  This is firstly, cheaper and secondly allows for more experimentation with blending. I have added about 200ml of boiling water to the jars above.

Here I have split each dye between two jars, so I have some left to mix together later.

Here I am adding scraps of batting to the three dye baths.  You can see that the colour is being taken up already.  I microwave on high for 1 to two minutes depending on how many jars I put in the microwave.  After microwaving, I use the tongs you see (the fabric is very hot and so is the jar) to squeeze excess dye out of the fabric, rinse under cold water till the water runs clear, then dry the fabric.

Here I am mixing up orange, green and purple.  Orange is 1 part red to at least three parts yellow.  Green is 1 part blue and two yellow and purple is 1 part red to three parts blue.  What I have found, is that the red is very strong, whilst the yellow is very weak, so be prepared for this.

And here is my basic colour wheel in batting.  I like to dye batting to use in machine embellishing.  It does not always take the dye evenly and this gives it depth.

Now, I am adding cotton fabric, scrunched up.

I don't mix the fabric around, but just let the dye soak up from the bottom, then microwave.  This leaves undyed areas that can be dyed over later.

In this picture, I am doing the same with scrim, which is very useful in embellished and stitched collages.  It has some transparency, but takes up dye well.
So that is the basic technique, except of course for rinsing, drying and pressing.
So let's have the eye candy.

 Cotton, loosely bunched, dyed with red.  You will find that even though the red is stronger, it is not as colour fast.  If you know anything about quilt history, you will know also that the fastness of red has always been an issue.

 A selection of batting scraps dyed with straight colours, except for the taupe one in the bottom left, which was spotted with many colours of dye, then microwaved.

 A selection of batting scraps dyed several times with green, yellow, and a mixture of red, blue and yellow which makes brown (diluted).  In the bottom right corner are lots of tiny scraps, I use these in landscapes as grass, and tree trunks etc.

 Cotton, dyed with blue, loosely scrunched.

 Scrim, double dyed with blue and purple

 Scrim, double dyed with blue and red.

 Synthietic curtain lace and binding strip, dyed with diluted orange.  Synthetics do not take up the dye well.  I treated this sample with alum when the dye was washed out.

 Batting scraps dyed with blue.  compare them with the original dark blue batting scrap at the bottom.  The dyebecome more dilute as you use it.

 Scrim, dyed with purple and green.

 Hessian, or burlap dyed with blue and red.

 Cotton dyed with purple and green (my favourite mixture) Theone on the right used a more dilute purple mixture.

 Cotton dyed with red and yellow.  Sometimes, when dyes mix together, the dye can precipitate out, creating specks on the fabric.  This is what made the brown spots.  They make a nice texture and make it look rusted.

The final, pastel sample is using leftover green, red and yellow, now very diluted.  It is not spectacular, but I can see it in some needleturn applique roses in the near future.

I hope you enjoyed my little dyeing escapade.  As usual, this experiment simply gave me more ideas for further experiment down the track and provided a large stash of fabrics to use in collage. 
My actual dyeing time was only a few hours, but all the photography took a long time and as usual I am late posting.  But it was worth it.

The creation of art is in our own hands.