Creating Texture on Fabric with Stamping

 

Here is our magnificent bouganvillea vine before it browned off and got slightly frosted.  Each year it gets a little frosted and each year it comes back (after a haircut) better than ever!

One day at our play dates we did some fabric stamping.  It is quite addictive and no object around the house is sacred anymore .  There are many regular items which have the potential to be great for stamping or rubbing.

We did the stamping onto plain white homespun which was first washed thoroughly.  We used our ordinary old acrylic paints with textile medium added.  Eventually I will dye or paint the backgrounds of my stamped fabric to take away the starkness.

This bright yellow piece was not stamped but simply scrunched and fabric painted and left to dry all scrunched up.  I have since stamped it with a new acquisition.

I found this dinky di batik stamp in a dress/gift shop, and even better, it was half price!!

The new look yellow piece is going into a new art quilt which I am doing for the Toowoomba Quilters display of “time for tea” related quilts at the exhibition in September.

Can you guess what the other background piece is?  Yes it is recycled used tea bags.  I think my darling husband thought it was time to book me in to the mental health unit when I started collecting these !!!!

Following are all the different textures I created on the day.  It was sooooooo much fun.  Each piece is just A4 size.

A piece of foam packing

Large bubble wrap

A loofah type of sponge thingy

Masking tape pieces stuck to cardboard

Marks made into a meat tray with knitting needle

Rubber bands around a cardboard roll

String tied around cardboard roll

This is a commercial fabric which I have used gold shiva stick over a commercial rubbing plate.  This piece will go into the “time for tea” quilt.

To finish off, here is a picture of our delightful grandy, Lilian, enjoying one of her favourite things to do, making mud pies.

Playing with Fabric Painting and finishing a Thread Sandwich!

Time is flying by and another month has cruised past me.  During the month of May a small group of us have been meeting at a friend’s house to play with all manner of textile things.  Fabric painting, stamping and making our own cord among other things.

Here is Linda showing us some of her creations and explaining what we can do with our fabric paints.
The following technique is done with a wire rack. 


Starting in the middle, poke your fabric through the holes using the end of a paintbrush.

This is mine and I have dabbed the blue paint into the wells and the green onto the surrounding fabric.

The pieces are laid out to dry.

My finished piece which looks a little bit like little blue pansies.
We also used the fabric paints in a shaving cream marbling technique.  It was a lot of fun and yielded some amazing results.


I used some left over paint and shaving cream and did this stencil with it. 

We then did a sun print.  Firstly we painted the fabric with fabric paint, laid out our objects ( we used bracken fern leaves ) and then laid the pieces out in the sun to dry.

This is my finished sun print. (In between the leaves I sprinkled some lentils).  Very happy with it.
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Now for a long overdue finish!!
Last year we did a thread sandwich at art quilting with Linda Wrench.  It is just a matter of cutting up all little pieces of fabric, ribbon, braid, thread etc etc and laying it out on a base.  Then we covered this with water soluble stabilizer and free motioned quilted all over it. 
I made this little green box with mine.  It is a pattern from a Stitch magazine and was quite easy to make up.  I embellished the piece with a little bit of bling and made the cord with Linda a few weeks ago using wool and thread I had in the stash.


We are about to go away on another trip to the bush, but I hope to post more of what I have been up to over the past few weeks in the coming days. 
It is a busy time trying to pack and get organized for a big trip, but I still managed to start yet another quilt this week.  This one is for our daughter’s partner and I am doing some hand embroidery on it, so I just wanted to get it to a point where I can take it with us and perhaps do some on the trip. Also, I am on a time line – it has to be finished by early next year for his birthday!!
Ciao, Dianne.