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.

Once you start, you can't stop

Today I went a little overboard with monoprinting on fabric.  It took me over an hour to upload all the photos, so this might be a little longer than usual.

I started with a transparency, which, being transparent is a little hard to see above.

A pile of muslin pieces, roughly cut to size, Some hand wipes that didn't have much colour already and Some scraps of batting.  I also used a few scraps of chiffon.

A few tools and aids, many of which I didn't use,  but I'm showing you for posterity, lol.  Brayers, scrapers, brushes, a credit card, lots of pieces of foam and caps for printing, bubble wrap and string and sequin waste, and just a few stencils and masks.

Most importantly, paint and a water spray bottle (both upside down, but you get the idea).  I was using fabric paints today, but as you will see later, a bit of acrylic comes in handy.

This is the brayer I use for spreading the paint.  A half size paint roller, which I slide a toilet roll over.  The toilet rolls become quite lovely, and I use them too, but more on that another day.

My first plate was a bit thick, but I got two prints for the price of one.

Steps 1 to four - First I sprayed my fabric briefly, then laid the monoprint on top (I find this way is easier than laying the flimsy fabric on top of the print).  I brayered with a clean brayer over the plate, then peeled the plate away.  Voila'

The one at the top is the first one, and the bottom is the ghost print.  They both had gorgeous wavy texture, though.

 Next I thought I'd try a layered print.  I started with the same blue background, then used a bottle top to print circles in magenta.  Next I used a little piece of textured rubber to stamp in yellow.

 The final print is on the left above.  I sprayed a little too much water on the fabric, and it bled a bit, but still made a nice print.  On the right, I printed the ghost print into one of my journals.

Next I tried a stencil print.  Row 1 my stencil and some diluted acrylic paint sprays, Row2.  Sprayed over the stencil then removed it.  Row 3 brayered the plate down onto the fabric and peeled the plate off.

And the final print (above).

 Above I mixed a few colours and printed on fabric (above), then tried a piece of batting (below).

The one on the above left is the one from this print, with a few other pieces of batting.  I am looking forward to stitching into these.

 For this print above, I sprayed acrylic on, then textured it with a corrugated foam brush, then laid on some bubble wrap rollered with white paint.  I did a few of these (Picture 4).

Here I used the textured roller again, then added some white with a silicone basting brush, then dragged a grouting tool over.  I printed on chiffon for this one.

I really loved this print on the chiffon.  I also wiped up some mess with a piece and it looked great, too.

 I got a ghost print on some cotton, too.

 The one above was my favourite technique. 1.  put some paint on. 2. Lay another transparency on top and rub to spread the paint.  3.  Peel off and get a beautiful texture on two plates (click to enlarge).  4.  the two prints from the mirror image plates.  The one on the left is without dampening the fabric.  The one on the right was with fabric sprayed with water.  They were both beautiful.

At this stage I got into the flow and forgot to take photos

This was a ghost print from one of the other prints I did.

On this print, I drew into the plate before printing.

At one stage while I was printing, hubby came in with the mail, which was my product of the month from the thread studio. This month was lutradur (Thanks Dale), so I took a few pieces and printed them.  The one on the right was just some paint on the plate, but the ones on the left were printed from a cedar canyon ginko texture plate (Not quite monoprinting, but you will see why in a minute)  These samples were transparent and yummy and I can't wait to get working on them.

Thse were my other (lol) favourites.  I pressed the above mentioned texture plate into the paint before printing. Below them are two close ups.  The texture plates still had paint on, so that is why I got the lutradur prints.

This one used a stencil of lace I cut with my silhouette.

This one used the corrugated foam roller again.

The one on the left used a piece of foam to overprint the green before printing.  The one on the right was just some paint and some drops of gold, but the transparency I used actually had an image on it and it transferred too!

And of course I ended up with some very colourful wipes!

And that was as far as I got, it was tea time when I finished and so I haven't had time to put together a journal quilt for this experiment.  It will have to wait for next time.


Until then, happy creating!