Fiber Art Wednesday

Hopefully, I am going to get more regular with this - each week I hope.
Today's collage is inspired by Melanie Testa and Deborah Boschert, as was the last one, here.

I started with a piece of textured furnishing fabric as my foundation, layered on some non woven stabiliser.  I get lots of my fabrics for collage at recycling places, as samples. 

I collected up some chiffon, lace and other little bits.

Then arranged them to form my background collage.  As you can see I am using a purple/green colourway, which is one of my favourites.

I stitched them all down free motion, using a green rayon thread.  The stitching is very simple on this one, just fastening the pieces down.

Then I took some lilac coloured sheer chiffon for the applique.

And stitched a leaf silhouette on it.

Then trimmed back around it to create a raw edge applique.  Don't cut too close, or you will be sorry - more about that later.
Then I started embellishing.

I did some seed stitching in the large green chiffon square with gold metallic thread, and added a little dragonfly made from knitted wire tube and some beads.  (hopefully I will do a tutorial on these later).

I also did some chain stitch curves and a spiral with a variegated perle thread.  I blanket stitched the edge with the same thread.
Now I hear you saying, what about cutting the applique too close?  I did cut too close in places and when I was doing the seed stitch, the applique came out of the stitches in places.  I repaired it with a little fusible tape, ironed under the loose bits, but the fusible was visible.  That was when I decided to add the dragonfly and the chain stitch.  They covered up my mistakes and finished the piece. Yes!

And here is the finished piece.  It is about 8x10in.  Of course I could have kept embellishing forever, but doing a weekly video makes me keep it simple, which is probably a good thing.

And here is the video

Happy Creating!

To bead or ot to bead

So this month's embellishment for TAMM is paper beads.
If you have looked at my facebook community here, you will see that I also post my blog there.  There is no joining per se, but anyone may post if they have something relevant for the month.  I will remove anything such as advertising or anthing offensive.
As yet, I have nothing in mind for this month's collage/journal quilts.  I am after all only on my second element, that being embellishment.

Paper beads

I started with double sided tape.  As you can see below, I have a huge collection of tape, most of which I get from resource rescue or the reverse art truck.

I add paper, fabric, even roving to the double sided tape (this is about 2 in wide), keeping the interesting side of the strip if there is one to the top, or outside.  Below is abaca fibre paper.

Here are a few different papers, etc I used for this batch.

 You can see I have used fuffed up roving (top left), tissue paper (top right) and in the bottom from left, foil, two scrapbook papers, paper napkin, Lace, paper lace (scrapbooking) and fabric.
I used small straws as my base.

The second from the right is the Type I used, from juice boxes.  These are nice and thin.

The hard part can be peeling the backing paper off!

Then I lay the trimmed straw on the tape, sticky side up and roll it up.

 

After it is rolled, I cut it into beads the length I want.

Next comes the embellishing, with beads, more tape, wire, yarns and braids.

For this set of beads, I chose a pearly tissue paper as a second layer and rolled that on.

I decided to add some thin gold braid in a spiral.  I used a stilleto (left) to push the end of the braid under the tissue layer so it would be held by the adhesive, rolled it around and attached the other end the same way.

Most definitely a job for magnifying glasses!

Above are some of the bases before embellishing.  Below are some of the sets I made.

These were made with foil tape, tissue, and beads on some wire.

These were a green foil tape and some lilac roving.  I added some beads on wisre to one but not sure if that's what I wanted.

These two long beads were made with felt tape, then paper lace and then a little gold braid.
To add yarn or ribbon, I attach a little square of double sided tape to the bead (below).  In this case I am adding some paper twine.  The adhesive helps to anchor the thread.  I also add a drop of super glue to the knot to make sure it doesn't come undone.

These two were made with some transparent green tape and purple tissue tape.

Below - a layer of pink roving and some fancy yarn.

Candy/Lolly wrappers and abaca paper, then rubbed with gold wax.

In the right picture at the bottom are also some made from lace, then rubbed with the wax.
And finally, a whole collection of beads.  some are not embellished, so that I can make then fit into a particular piece (or am I just lazy?)

I got ideas for these beads from many sources, including Beryl Taylor, Sherrill Kahn and Rebekah Meier, to name a few, also Quilting Arts, QATV and Cloth paper scissors. 

Hope you enjoyed this tute and make some of your own.

Happy creating!

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.