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.

weaving and burning

Today's ATC is woven from coloured strips of paper attached to a sticky label, then stamped.
I really need to get some tiny letter stamps, don't you think?

Today, I played with some tyvek.

Terrible picture, sorry.  The one on the left is painted with lumiere halo rose gold and the one on the right is painted with setacolour metallic green.

Here is a sample leaf cut out for each of the collages I am working on.  The background is here.
These are very nice, but I decided to play with the heat gun.

Here are the fabrics after distressing.

These two were cut out after distressing the tyvek.

These two were cut out first then heat distressed.  I liked the first set better, because it is easier to control the shape, since you cut it out after, and also, you can cut the leaf to take advantage of different textures in the distressed tyvek.  I think I will be using these for the Autumn collage most definitely and I will probably include a few in the gum leaf collage, just for continuity, since I like the suede ones for the gum leaves so far.
Mmmm, I think I might have some burnt orange suede somewhere......
I also made this sheet of fabric paper for the orange collage

But I think another layer of tissue and watercolour is in order first.

Happy stitching.

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

Hot Stuff Workshop

As I said a few days ago, before I went MIA over the weekend, on Saturday, I went to Neroli Henderson's Hot Stuff Workshop at ATASDA Vic.  It was a great day and we played with lots of bling. Neroli was a great tutor, giving everyone their own creative space, but at the same time explaining things very well.

First we played with tyvek.  we used a wide range of colouring materials to colour it and lots of angelina and other shiny stuff, then shrank it all.

These are my two pieces of tyvek after shrinking.  I used everything in my box, to experiment with how it colours and shrinks: water colour pencils, crayons, oil pastels, shiva sticks, rub ons, but you know what? the best thing to get a lot of colour on was textas!  Also, on looking at other people's work, the lumiere paint worked really well (must get some!).  I think I could get the same effect with texta and a metallic rub on.
After lunch, we got onto making a layered piece with sheers and synthetics which could be burnt with the heat gun.

This was my workspace, a bit of a mess compared to the tidy space opposite me.

Here we all are watching as one of the pieces is transformed with the heat gun.

And another piece.  Every person's work was different and all were interesting to watch as the layers appeared.

Here is the stitching on the back of my piece.

And after we heat gunned it.
I did a little work on it at home, adding a bit of paint.

And this is what it currently looks like.  I felt the leaf with the puff paint - yes, I finally got to use some puff paint - needed some definition.  I also think this piece would do well with a bit of hand embroidery and beading, so you might see it again in a week or two when that is done.

Since I often burn and distress my fabrics, someone asked me why I went to the workshop.  My answer was simply, that you can always learn something new.  And I did learn lots of new things and met lots of new people.
One of the things I have been thinking on since this workshop, is a way I can tweak this technique to use in some of my work.  I have come up with an extension of this that also uses some of my soldered applique method. I am playing with these and will show you soon.

If you don't live and learn, then how do you learn to live?

Hand Stitching on Tyvek samples

A few posts a go I wrote about creating textures on fabric using tyvek underneath (here).
With most of the samples, I felt they needed some embellishment to pretty them up.  so I have endeavoured to do this and  here are the results.

Here is the first.  If you remember, this was stitched in a grid with some of the squares filled in.  The filled in squares did not shrink.  I stitched around these squares and added a bead in the centre to define them.

For this sample, stitched in a wave and spiral pattern, I couched some machine wrapped cords over the stitched lines.  The green ones have the best contrast.  They all help to make the puffing look wavy.

For this one, I couched around the leaf shape which was heavily stitched and did not shrink.

With this sample, which was stitched in straight lines and created a shirred look, I tried three things.
At the top I have stitched over the stitching lines with a gold thread.
Next, I have couched some machine wrapped cord along the stitching lines.
At the bottom, I have beaded randomly on the stitching lines.
All three look interesting, especially the fact that the embellishments are sometimes hidden and sometimes peep out, but the beading looks the best.

This last sample was the one I liked the most.  Even though I stitched a shell pattern, the puffs created by the tyvek looked diamond shaped, so I couched down gold thread to emphasise the diamonds and beaded each intersection.  It looks very mediaeval.

Sometimes when we experiment with interesting textures and surfaces, we forget that stitch is an important part of the design process which can highlight, define and improve what we have done.
So, when your experiments don't look the way you thought they would, (and do they ever?) think about how you could use stitch to alter them or embellish them.

Even I, who can put 16 bobbins worth into a sixteen inch square of fabric, sometimes neglect stitch in favour of straight texture, but stitch gives textures character.

Add a bit of stitch to your world.

Tyvek experiments

After my post about tyvek the other day, I was intrigued with the gathering effect when you stitch fabric on one side and heat the tyvek on the other, so I had a play.

In the first sample, I stitched a grid, and filled in some of the squares to stop the tyvek shrinking.  As you can just see on the right, this worked, but the flat areas need some definition, perhaps with beading.

The next sample, I did a rough sketch of a leaf, filling in the leaf and tacking the tyvek down loosely around it.
You can see the leaf is flat in the centre, but again needs defining.  If I didd the stitching with a heavy thread in the bobbin and  tight bobbin, loose upper (cable stitch), or did this after the shrinking, perhaps this would make a good effect.

Here, I have added batting to the leaf to define it more.

In this sample, I stitched clam shells/scallops.  It is hard to see in the photo, due to such a dark fabric, but this makes oval puffs, which again could be defined with stitching.

In this sample, I stitched wavy lines and the puffs looked like curver shirring.  The puffs were not as defined in this sample, as I put some light iron on interfacing on the back of the fabric to see what would happen if the fabric was heavier.  Instead of shrinking, the tyvek tended to form holes, which is also useful, but not what I was looking for here.

In this sample I sewed relatively close straight lines and the fabric really bunched up nicely in lines.  It looks just like shirring with elastic, but of course, it doesn't stretch. quite nice.

In this last sample, I used a wavy spiral design to try and get some spots and puffs.  I also sandwiched the tyvek in batting to try and slow the shrinking.  This sample, although a bit dark to see the definition again, gave a really soft and defined texture that would really pop with some stitching and beads.
I think I will spend the next few evenings adding a bit of stitching to these samples, then I will show them to you.
I will hopefully be doing a workshop with Neroli Henderson at ATASDA Vic next week on tyvek and such, perhaps she will give me a few ideas.  I am sure she will.

Keep on playing, it keeps art fresh.