2 x 3 and some collage leaves

This ATC was made with little scraps of japanese brocade and faux suede attached to pink plastic bag ironed to batting, then added to a card.


I have been working on a pair of collages.

These are both fabric paper on a stretched frame with modelling paste leaves.  I want the next layers to be dimensional and then finally fabric and have been experimenting with leaves to add.

The leaf on the left is fabric paper and the one on the right is faux suede, painted with red and orange, and fused (two layers, because it wasn't stiff enough) then cut with a soldering iron.

The faux suede gumleaf above is made the same way. (it is not quite a dark as it seems in the photo) I haven't quite got to the green fabric paper yet, but I will.

After I have made enough leaves, I also intend to make dimensional fabric gumnuts and acorns to embellish as the final touch on each, but I am still mulling ideas around for those in my head.

of course, I will also use the tyvek leaves I made  a while ago as well.

Have fun in your garden.

Fibres, Shells and stamps

I am still trying to catch up on all the email and stuff I need to do after being away for nearly a week with no internet, but I am slowly getting there.
Today was a very productive day, although I have not done all I planned, because I thought of other things during the day - and did them.

This ATC is made from some yummy fibres from a piece of brocade laid on batting and ironed over with some pink garbage bag.  The little piece of frayed fabric is the same brocade and it is attached with a bead, as is the batting - attached to a piece of card with beads.  The writing says "Flowing" - referring to the fibres, but is very hard to see in the photo. 

This journal quilt came about from being untidy.  I had been given these small charm squares ina gorgeous fabric.  They were lying on my table.  I had unstrung a necklace of shells.  They were lying on the table.  I put both together and voila' a new journal quilt.  This one was all done by hand.  I did not piece the squares, but basted them down and stitched all over them with seed stitch and french knots, then added the shells and beads.

Since I talked about stamps yesterdauy, I thought I would finish that off by showing the stamps I made yesterday.

I think I have said, I use perspex scraps and glue fun foam pieces on with rubber cement.  One thing I am enjoying doing, is making positive and negative images like the two above, where the pieces I cut out of one were made into the mirror image on another piece of perspex.

This is how they stamped out on a page roughly painted with gesso (my journal).  They stamp out nicely on smooth paper.  I seem to be making lots of all over stamps lately, as backgrounds, and I like the geometric ones.

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)

Bonded fibre film -Angelina

I had intended to blog about the workshop I did today with Neroli Henderson at ATASDA, and I will, but unfortunately, I am away from home for a few days and forgot to bring my card reader with me.  Silly me.  So you will have to wait for that one.  Needless to say it was great and a great group of people.
So, with no more ado, I will instead show you the first of the bonded fibres experiments.  In my categorisation of fibre films, these are the heat method.

As you might have noted, there is one further group after this.  The final type of fibre film at present is making films by manipulating fibre and fabric.  I have updated the Tutorials page so that all the fibre film tutorials up to this one are listed.

So, back to bonded fibre films.  The reason I call this the heat method is that, unlike the glue method, these films require heat to bond.  As fibre artists, we are blessed with a range of heat bonding methods.  Fusible webs, bonding powder, plastics and angelina are a few that come to mind.  My soldering iron applique method fits into this category as well.  This is the method I used to make the rocks in my first challenge piece for tangled textiles
The first one I am going to look at is angelina.

The first and most important thing (other than an iron, of course), is silicone coated paper, release paper, or baking paper as we call it in Oz.  All of these bonding agents could make a mess of your iron, so you need to protect it and your ironing surface as you work.
I usually roll off a large piece and pre fold it in half, so that I can fold it over the top of my layers before I iron

Above, I have spread a very thin layer of angelina on the baking paper (I did have a picture, but you could not see the angelina), then I have laid some threads and fancy yarn scraps over the top of the angelina.  I then laid another fine network of angelina over the top of this - to trap the yarns between.

Here, You can see the top layer of baking paper folded over the fibre layers.

After ironing, the angelina fuses together, trapping the yarns into a fine net.  When ironing these angelina films, I give the film only two or three quick sweeps with the iron.  If you keep the iron on the film too long, it will dull the shine of the angelina fibres.

So that is the basic method:

• a layer of angelina
• a layer of bits
• a layer of angelina
• baking paper
• iron briefly

The film can be stitched through quite easily, and it doesn't take much angelina to make a film.  My personal preference is less is better.  you can always add more if required, but besides thick films not looking as good, they are also harder to stitch.

Here are some pictures of a few samples:

This is the first film with a wide variety of threads and yarns.

This lovely sample trapped some skeleton leaves I found in the garden.

This one uses bits of foil from lolly (candy) wrappers.

This one uses snippets of light lutradur or rainbow spun.  All very shiny!

These are snippets of gold shot organza and crushed velvet.  Great texture.

This, is strips of coloured plastic bags.  The bags also melt and pucker.

And this last sample, the piece de resistance, is silk tops.  Using this method, it is possible to make extremely thin pieces of silk paper which will not fall apart and can be stitched down easily.  There is the added bonus of the sheen of the angelina setting the silk colours off.


Making these films can be addictive, you can use almost anything small and flat and they make lovely additions to art quilts and fibre art pieces.  I like to use them like a mat between a background and a small art piece.  They frame small work beautifully, but they can also be torn or cut up for inclusion in your work.


A little bit of shiny stuff goes a long way and can help to give interest to the focus of your piece. 

Water samples using plastic

I have been working on two pieces which have a river or creek in them. 
I got the idea of using recycled plastic bags for this, taking advantage of how the bags break up under heat when there is only one or two layers.

Above shows what happens when you iron one or two bags (top) and several bags (bottom).  When I did these experiments a while ago, I really liked this texture, especially when you ironed only one layer onto fusible.

Above are a black, blue and grey sample of plastic bags layered on fusible.

This sample, with several blue and grey layers, added one by one reminded me of running water, so I made up a sample using a photo to get some colours into it.

 You can't see the colours very clearly in the photo, but I have exaggerated the hints of colour I could see on my original.

This is what I came up with.  In this sample, I added fusible to a piece of blue cotton, then ironed different coloured pieces on top until I got something that looked like water if I squinted.  There was a large problem with this sample - because I didn't use a stabiliser, it puckered as the layers of plastic shrank.  You can see the puckers at the top.

 So I repeated it again with some stabiliser and above are the results.  On the left is the first stage, but I was unhappy with this and added some more white.  I was happier with the one on the right.
Another thing I learnt, is that if plastic is layered over the top of plastic (one by one) as I was doing in the last layers of the first sample, you get more defined holes.  In the second sample, I used pre fused films which I peeled off and added layer by layer, so all the plastic had fusible on it.
I was pretty happy with these samples, but there was still a lot of stitch needed to bring it all together.  I only used a simple free motion straight stitch, and the stitching could probably be done without free motion since I basically sewed back and forth in straight lines.

Above are the finished samples, with quite a bit of stitching, however there is nowhere near as much as it seems, because the plastic colours give the stitching depth.
I will be using this technique for one of my pieces, but will be trying out some painted fusible before deciding on the other piece.

Easter basket

 WOW!  and I really mean WOW or Workshop on the Web.  I won!  Workshop on the web is a quarterly english online magazine that I joined a while ago.  It puts out really professional tutorials by some of the best and well-known fibre artists in the UK and elsewhere - and I have won some yummy goodies and a book and entry to an online group for the book.  The book is called Mixed Media: New Studio Techniques by Isobel Hall and Maggie Davies.  You can click on their names to see the great work they do and I know you will agree that this win is perfect for me.


With easter looming, I thought a little project for kiddies might be the go.
This is a small easter basket, which can be as simple or as elegant as you like.
Start with the fabric (or paper, or card) you  wish to use.  I have decided to make mine using the plastic collage  of fusible web I did a few weeks ago

You will need a square.  I chose nine inches, since it can be divided easily by three.  I actually cut my fusible collage a bit bigger to allow for shrinkage during ironing.  I ironed it on to an aqua piece of cotton.  You will need a reasonably stiff piece of fabric, or one which has been stabilised well

Remember to use parchment paper if you are using webbing as I am.

Once ironed, I trimmed the piece to it's final size

My piece shrank a little more than I wanted, so I am using an old tradesman's trick to easily divide into thirds (leave me a comment if you want to know more)

Mark lines, dividing the fabric into thirds left to right and top to bottom (like a nine-patch)

 Sew ribbon, or cording or yarn along the two horizontal lines.  I have used a flat knitting tape which was variegated in all the colours on the other side.  I attached it with straight stitch.

Do the same along the vertical lines, making a grid.  (make sure you leave enough free at each end to tie a bow)

I ran a line of clear nail polish around the edge of the fabric to seal it and stop it fraying.  If you wish you could use fray stop, or you could bind the edge, or do satin stitch, or blanket stitch.  It is all up to you.

Grab two adjacent ribbons, (if you look at the pic above, I mean the two ribbons that come out on each side of a corner, like the two on which the bottle is sitting) and tie them in a bow.

Fold over the little bunny ear you create after tying to show the inside fabric

Repeat this for all four corners

The finished basket.  You  might need to tweak the bottom corners a little to make them sit square.

Because you have made a two sided fabric, you can decide which side is out and change it to suit yourself

There are a myriad of options to assemble your box. You can sew ribbons on as I outlined above, you can sew a button and loop on or you can simply sew up the side seams, you can use grommets and ribbon, similar to the cardboard idea below.  You can quilt the fabric, you can free machine embroider, add embellishments

As I said, this is a simple little basket, and in fact, with a little assistance, you could have kids making their own out of card.  Instead of sewing ribbon on (which you could still do), punch holes in the corners to thread ribbon through.

I know kids would love to make these for their easter eggs, but perhaps not big enough?   This can be made as big as you like, I have been thinking of trying a huge one, quilted, to make a picnic basket and as a rug when unfolded, but more thought is needed.

Enjoy your baskets.

Once you open the creative door, ideas are plenty, whilst time is short.  

Choose to do what you love and it will shine.