lace and a journal quilt

This ATC is simply made from a piece of lace freemotioned onto a mini sandwich (background, batting and backing, with the word also free motioned.

I did say, the other day that I would have to use up the lutradur scraps that were left after making die cut flowers, here.  Well, this is the result.  I used one of the sheets I had cut out of then free motioned the edges down (sort of like reverse applique, only, it wasn't reverse, lol).  I decided it needed another flower as a focus, so I grabbed another flower and free motioned it down.  I could see this as a larger piece, with beading and lots of yummy fabrics underneath.

Here's today's digi inspiration.

sewing at last!

Today's ATC - Painted and heat distressed Lutradur  free machined over chocolate and gold brocade.

And the show is over.  Over the weekend, I have had to learn to accept compliments gracefully, which is something I find hard.  Perhaps it an Aussie thing, to deflect compliments instead of basking in them, but I have always felt so embaressed when people compliment me.
Well, this weekend, I had lots of people I didn't even know compliment me on my work and I think I am getting the hang of just saying thankyou.  The blushing, well that's another matter, I can't control that, lol.

Hopefully, now I can have a few days in my studio to play.  I think I am suffering from withdrawal from not having any creative outlet!


Play every day!

Some origami and some more printing

mono printed fabric, origami hexagon in white satin, bead, transparency transfer The transfer is the japanese character for 'folding'.

When I was printing on the tissue paper, I also tried some other surfaces that I had been going to do for a while.  And, yes, Judy, one of them was fusible, lol.  thanks.

This one was printing on light interfacing.  The main problem I had with this is that the rollers pulled the fibres off the surface and jammed the machine.  In the end, I had to fold a piece of tissue and fix it at the top, so the fibres didn't catch, and as you can see, I got a good print - missing the first inch or so of course.

 This one was on Tyvek and it worked extremely well.  The print was really sharp and clear.

This was on nappy liner, and although it looks as though it printed well, most of the ink went straight through and only a wer faint print remained.  This is just too thin!

This one was on fusible and printed really well.   This is one of the things I had been wanting to try for ages.
This picture also highlights something I learned whilst doing this.  The paper you use as a carrier does not have to be a full lenght.  you can see here, I have reused a piece of paper and it is shorter because I cut off the previously glued  bit at the top (which is now the bottom)

This one is on a polyester non woven (or light lutradur)  This tended to bleed a bit.  After I had done it, I remembered that it is better to coat it with some medium or PVA before you print to get a sharper print.  I'm pretty sure you told me that, Judy.  As you can see a lot of the ink went straight through - although this paper will make a nice distressed print for collaging.

This one is a heavy Lutradur and i didn't use a carrier for it.  It went through and printed well, except, where it had been folded in the packet, tended to pick up ink from the heads.  I will have to work out a way of getting the folds out, perhaps a warm iron with a bit of mist?  or pressing under some books.

The last one is tyvek paper, which also did not need a carrier.  It has a totally different texture to tyvek fabric and appears more like a very smooth lutradur, which has been pressed.  (Which it probably basically is as they are both polyester fibres.  Although the image was good, it did bleed a little.

So now, my poor printer has printed on just about everything over the last year!
As you can see, I have done most of my prints at around ATC size, so you will probably see many of these prints cropping up through the year.  I'm sure to manipulate them in unimaginable ways, so you might have too look hard to recognise them, lol.


“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.” — Edward de Bono

Those red buttons and a prize

I was getting some bits together for a recycled mixed media collage...

If we go clockwise from the bottom left, a plastic lid, some stained tea bags, foil lolly wrappers, plasterer's mesh, metal from an aluminium can, some decorating fabric samples, some vinyl scraps, felt and dyrd batting, painted tyvek and two plastic rings.  In the centre are a variety of  'embellishments', such as washers, resistors, metal and plastic tube bits,  old coloured LEDs, a reflector from a bike, a piece of mirror from a cd drive and other little bits and pieces I have collected.

Now if that list seemed like a long one, it is and putting the selection together took me almost all afternoon!  So, obviously, I haven't started on the piece yet.  It will be something for next week. 
While you are waiting  however, I have decided to have a give away.

I already have my piece mapped out and it has a theme, but I will put every comment on this post (only) with a suggestion of what I might be going to do or a theme I might follow into the draw with a number and next Monday I will draw a winner from random.org.

The prize will be six floral fat quarters.

 Red buttons
Now on to the real blog for today, which is showing you my last Tangled Textiles challenge, which happened whilst I was offline last month.
I did something really different this time and because it was a bit mixed media, I'm showing it to you today.

Here is the finished piece.  As you can see it is made up of lots of little mini quilts.  In fact, I assembled so many of these, I have enough to make another one, with different techniques to these, and I will show you these as I do them, rather than after the event, like I am now.
In no particular order, here are the little quilts and what I did with them.
All of the little quilts were backed with felt.

This one had a background fabric of textured brocade in brown and gold.  The background was overlaid with red sinnamay , which is a very stiff netting used in hats, woven from abaca.
I have then beaded randomly with gold seed beads around the two motifs.
The motifs are mad up of a square of red lutradur (or rainbow spun from pellon). Over this I have laid two flowers cut with a soldering iron from gold shot organza and the red lutradur, then I added the gold buttons, which came from a uniform of some sort.  The panel was bound with red satin ribbon and a running stitch in a thick gold thread.

This next one (I have rotated some of the photos so they show better on the blog) has a thick gold brocade as the base.  Over that I have taken a very thin red chiffon and done some large smocking.  On alternate smocking intersections I have sewn on either
stacked buttons, an antique mother of pearl and a pearly red with a large gold seed beed, or
a small gold seed bead and red sequin. 
I have also added groups of three gold bugle beads down the centre triangles.
This panel is not bound, but has a red chain stitch with gold french knots down each side.

This panel was made from a red brocade with a gold woven pattern.  The motifs were layered from a gold lutradur flower, a gold shot organza flower, a transparent red button and a gold heart brad, which was poked down through the hole of the button for a perfect fit!
This one was not bound, but has a fly stitch in red around the edge with gold seed beads.

This panel was my favourite.  It had almost no sewing in it!  The base is a red fabric paper made from foils.  This was attached with large square brads.
Then a square of head distressed red chiffon and a square of gold shot cotton which had been frayed were attached with smaller square brads.
The red flower applique was an iron on one I had had in my sewing box for many years, then I added a gold filligree button I got from my Mother.

This panel had a panel of a japanese patterned red and gold brocade.  The button motifs were stacked from an antique dark red button, an antque mother of pearl button, a red star sequin and a large red seed bead.
Again, this one had a turned edge and was edged with red bugle beads interspersed with cross stitch in a very thick gold thread.

This one had a see through base, so the felt showed through.  The first layer was an angelina fibre film with gold organza and cream velvet pieces in it.  This was overlaid by a piece of red plastic netting from a fruit bag.  The motifs were composed of an antique mother of pearl button, a gold button and a red facetted bead, surrounded by spokes of  red bugle beads and a further circle of cold seed beads.
This panel was bound with a red organza ribbon attached with fly stitch in red thread.

This was my other favourite panel.  It was based on a piece of textured gold brocade bound with gold satin ribbon.  The motifs were made from a flower stencilled with modelling paste, allowed to dry, then painted with gold acrylic.  Each flower centre is a triangular red button topped with a large gold seed bead.  These were sewn on with gold thread in a type of wrap, so the gold thread forms 3d spokes.  It is hard to see in the picture, but is gorgeous in real life if I do say so myself.
I beaded in a diagonal grid with red seed beads in the spaces between the motifs.

This little one is a bit blurry.  The base os a bronze brocade quilted in diagonal running stitch with red thread.  It was bound with red nylon knitting tape, to which I added red seed beads.
The motif is layered from a large red, then gold lutradur flower, then a small red lutradur flower and a very old red button I had as a child.  I added some gold seed beads in the apexes of the petals of the button.

 This very simple panel was formed on a base of a pale gold brocade with red painted fusible ironed on top.  I used another red daisy applique and  a flat gold metal button that had a shank, but was set flat by punching a hole threough the centre of the layers.  This was surronded by a scattering of gold seed beads and two little embroideries, the bound with blanket stitch in red.

This little one was made on a base of shot furnishing fabric in gold and brown.  A piece of shot metallic and red organza was frayed and placed over the top, held down by a row of gold seed beads top and bottom.
The motifs were stacked of a large antique button, not plastic, but probably bakelite, which makes it quite old, a red transparent button and a square bronze pearly button.  Again I attached these using the wrapping technique, which created two wings of spokes in red metallic thread because of the two button holes.

Another small one, had a red satin base with chain stitch top and bottom in a red perle thread.
Over this I put a piece of distressed ciffon in a red and gold textured colour.  The gold lines are metallic perl wire coils which were couched on.  The buttons were simply some gold thimble shapes that I couldn't resist.

Getting near the end now.  This one has red taffeta that I have tacked onto the felt underlay.  There is a glod lutradur square attached with small gold brads, a red lutradur flower and a red felt flower I bought in a packet at a discount store and then a tortoise shell button with a gold filigree centre.

This panel I had a lot of fun putting together.  The base is a bronzy/gold brocade.  Each gold button is set on a tiny label/tag which has been painted red with nail polish (the mixed media artist's best friend).  the buttons are attached with a large red seed bead and the tags each have a bow made from thick gold thread and are sewn down through the hole.
I couched on some red satin cord on a wavy pattern and emphasised it with long red stitches.

 This tiny one was made from an origami hexagon folded from gold lurex.  The hexagon was actually made for a christmas table runner, but I decided to use white instead and this fit in perfectly for this piece.  The centre is a mother of pearl button and a small red button attached with  a large red seed bead.

This final panel, although ver small had a lot of work in it due to the seed bead border.  It is simply a god button with a red centre and red organza flowers on a piece of gold satin.

Wow, it almost took me as long to explain this quilt as it did to make it!
 The whole quilt, with some painted lutradur as the top under the panels, was quilted with running stitch before the panels were added and bound with textured red organza ribbon decorated with red bugle beads and see beads.

Oh, and I forgot.  It was all done by hand.

Anyway, I hope you liked the piece and don't forget to comment about what I might do with my trash.

Spend more time being creative, turn off the computer
(after you've read this of course)

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.

Snow Gums

For my WIP Wednesday, I am showing you the first steps of a new large landscape I have been mulling over for a while.
In this case, I did not have a sketch or photo to work from, the idea had just been in my head for a while.  I started by placing a large 1400 by 900mm   (about 50  by 36 in) sheet of lutradur up on my design wall.

The lutradur is lightweight and a pale green colour.  I get it by the roll from the hardware where it is sold as weed mat.  I have recently started using this under my free machined work because it gives it body without bulk, so I don't need to use a hoop or add batting to do free motion work.  It is very similar to light lutradur and becomes softer with use, especially when you are doing hand work.
You can see above I have drawn a sketch of the tree straight onto the stabiliser.  I know this is a difficult picture to read, because of the transparency of the lutradur.  Here is a digital sketch of what is drawn on the stabiliser.

Better?  At least now you will know what I am talking about.  I traced this onto wide format printer paper with coloured markers as my pattern.

Above, I have the pattern folded and some tracing paper ready.
Of course we all know that when the moment comes to begin a new project, the perfect fabric is nowhere to be found.
I could not find any sky fabric which I really wanted to use in this piece, so I took some mid blue fabric and painted it with decolourant!

Here it is before the decolourant dried.

After ironing, looking good!

after washing out the decolourant.

And after the final iron.  This is pretty close to what I wanted, except perhaps a little blue still (this fabric did not go all the way to white - even with steam)  This gives me an opportunity to add more white with thread later.
So now I was ready to start putting up the sky.  I do try to start from the distance if I can, but since I am pinning my pieces not fusing or glueing this time (to allow more ease in the thread painting), I can easily add extras in at any stage.

Here I am tracing the sky areas of my pattern.  you can see that I don't worry too much about accuracy here as the layers will all overlap.  The arrows I have drawn outside the piece are to remind me of this overlap.

Next, I take my tracing and pin it to my sky fabric.  Then rough cut out the pieces with at least an inch extra.

Here are two of the rough cut pieces.  Remember, the arrows mean overlap.  No arrows means an edge of the whole.  In this case, the top.

Next, I trim the tracings back to the line.  ONLY the tracings, not the fabric.

 This is the reason why.  I trace around the shape onto the fabric with an iron-off pen.  This is to help me place the overlapping layer correctly later.

Then I simply place these pieces onto my foundation in the correct place ready for the next fabric, which will be all the hills in the distance.
That was a lot of writing, for something that really took a short time.  Needless to say it might be a few weeks before you see the next step in this sequence.

Just to finish off on a high note, here are a few photos of a very friendly King Parrot I had a chat with this afternoon.

Hello there, you don't mind if I just have a nibble?

If I promise only to eat weeds, would that be OK?

Of course, with all these weeds, I might have to stay a while...

No, No, I was not casting nasturtiums on your gardening skills!

Oh well, it was a lovely chat and I must visit again soon.  bye.

As you can see we had a lovely talk and it wasn't until I had gotten about a foot from him/her that  he/she felt the need to depart.

I'll be seeing you
Vicki