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.

Starts & Finishes

This past week has seen both finishes and starts – well, quite a few starts actually.  More starts than finishes, definitely, but they won’t all be shown here.  Firstly, I finished the small community cuddle quilt for the local hospital co-ordinated by Toowoomba Quilters club.

I have always wanted to do ‘echo quilting’, so I went around each heart about 1/2’ away.  It looked good, but I think it made the little quilt a bit stiff and I could have spaced the quilting a bit wider . It is 24” x 24” finished.

Next finish was done because there was a time frame.  I seem to work better when I have to have something finished by a certain time!
“The Uh-Oh Bra” is a take off of “The Ahhh Bra” which is advertised as being the best u-beaut bra on the market.  Well this poor ol’ one has seen better days. 
I painted it purple  which was the theme for the “Cuppa for Cancer” fund raiser at Toowoomba Quilters this year.  You can read all about the great day we had and all the decorated bras HERE.  I used Dye na Flow fabric paint  and then went to town to destroy it.  Hitting it with the heat gun almost set it on fire and I thought I was back in the 60’s woman’s lib movement burning bras.  It caught on fire and was quickly put out.  I then put the heat gun away and got out the scissors.

Our Art Quilt Group is doing portraits at the moment and I decided on a self portrait.  Scary……
Shirley manipulated the photo for me on Gimp and I have traced off the outline.
The plan is to free motion quilt it from the back through the drawing.  Free motion quilting is my nemesis.  I have watched all the you-tubes, plenty of DVD’s (which sent me to sleep), and read all the hints and tips I can, but still I seem to be hopeless at free motion. Oh, I have also done a workshop!!  I know, we are supposed to practice and that is what I am doing at the present time before embarking on the portrait.
But…. all I seem to do is a mess with it.   My attempts are far too ugly to be showing here on the blog.  Will keep practising.


WIP – Another collage journal cover started.  This time I wanted to experiment with image transfer and chose the gel medium method. After a lot of messing around and a lot of You Tube videos watched (latest addiction), I ended up with this

The image didn’t come out very strongly, but I kind of like the ethereal look of it and it’s ragged little edges. Lots more fun to be had with this yet.
Gotta run now and practice my free motion!!

A Hard Day’s Night

Backup, Backup, Backup.  It is drummed into us.  Still we sometimes become complacent.  Which is what happened to us. 
Since we have got back from our trip to the south several things have gone awry.  One of them was that we lost all our business data going back to last financial year (June 2012).  I guess we weren’t too worried about our computer crashing as it was only a couple of years old.  AHem.  They don’t make ‘em like they used to apparently. 
So, my friends, I have been busy trying to get back on track and waiting around for technicians to see if they could retrieve anything. They retrieved some, but not a lot.  Now we have a new computer and it is a matter of re-entering as much as we can.  Nearly there……

(Some soothing photos!!!)
In between the madness and mayhem I have been doing a little crafting and surfing of the net.  My latest addiction being ‘You Tube”.  It is so amazing what you can see being done on ‘You Tube’ !!
One thing I have been watching is very talented people art journaling.  So I thought I would like to do some pages and make a little booklet.  Then I had the bright idea of covering it and giving it to a friend who just turned 70.

My messy dining room table.  Oh how I would love to have another space just for fiddling around with art stuff.  No more room left in this house!!

Linda’s journal cover (opened out).  I am loving doing some fabric collage at the moment and I think hand stitching  makes it look very unique.  It was fun to practice going around the flowers and doing the embellishment on them with the free motion.  Gotta do more of that!

The magazine page which inspired the journal cover

The little journal inside.  I used pamphlet stitch to sew it all together.  It was easy peasy and such fun to make.
Another friend is turning 50 soon.  Yvonne, if you are reading this log out now!!!!

She is having a blue and red quilting party on Thursday so I made her this collage card to go with her blue and red fabrics I have got for her.
Last week Toowoomba’s annual show was held and we went along with our daughter and little grandy, Lilian.
Here are some photos of her enjoying her day and entertaining Nana and Grandad!

The Longest Long Weekend

My dear brother-in-law decided to choose the long weekend in January to take us on a road trip!!  We travelled west to Barcaldine and then we were meant to go east to Emerald and pick up some work equipment for my BIL and continue east and south to home.   Ahem…. no one counted on the rain that was going to deluge the east coast and throw our plans into disarray.  The upshot is we ended up spending an extra 4 nights in Roma while waiting for the creek to go down in Chinchilla which was cutting the main highway to Toowoomba. 
We are lucky!!  Only our plans were changed – this cyclone Oswald has changed some people’s lives forever.  Our hearts go out to all those people who have lost everything.  Sadly, there have been some lives lost as well.  After the events of 2010/2011, and now this,  it is going to be a long way back for some areas of Queensland.

(Historic pubs in Roma)
I was also able to revisit the Ace Drapery shop in Roma (three times).  A small purchase was made when the man found the DMC No 8 threads in amongst all the other rubble. 
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Sorry about the blurry photo.  This aisle is now fully blocked with stuff. (Photo taken in 2011)  The DMC was in another aisle)  The shop has got worse in regards to disorder.  The poor man needs help!!
Before I left, I was powering along with a bit of arty stuff and sewing.  Since coming back I have been all out of whack, but just so thankful we have all our possessions unlike some people in the north where whole houses were just washed away.
I saw some ‘fabric paper’ on Annet’s Fat Quarter blog which she got from Barbara’s site here, and thought I would try some and show our art quilt group how it was done.  Here is my effort.

Yes, there are wrinkles and one broken area, but I like the texture.  I used dye na flow fabric paints for the colouring but you could use watered down acrylics.  Now it can be cut up to use in projects or embellished further with stamping, stencilling, stitching, or anything your heart desires. 
The Toowoomba Quilters are holding an Open Day on Saturday 16 February and they put forward a challenge.  It was a table runner using two fabrics which were chosen for you to use, and you could add others of your own.
I had been wanting to make a table runner using some Australian Botanical fabrics I purchased some time back.  When I got the compulsory fabrics only one of them looked remotely like blending in.  The other one was, well…. ugly.
This is the ugly piece (furnishing fabric) after a little tea dyeing. Then I got stuck into it with a gold shiva stick and paints.  It eventually blended in and I used it only in the binding.

This is the end product. The lattice is the other challenge fabric.

Handmade tassels were a requirement of the challenge.  Thank you to Shirley who coached me on the tassels.  They have a glittering gold hood.  I used a red botanical for the backing and labelled it with a piece of the back of the ugly one “Runna Botanica”.
The challenge runners will be on display at open day and a small cash prize will be presented to the one with the most viewer votes.

Playing

Wednesday was a play day.  It was ANZAC day and a public holiday here.  As our daughter was working at the race track we had the wonderful opportunity of spending most of the day with our adorable grand daughter, Lilian.
Before Lilian arrived I was painting and stamping fabrics.
  
It was just calico fabric which I wet and crumpled then painted with acrylic paint while wet. (The colours look ugly here, but really, some of them were quite pretty.
After it dried I got the moulding stamp out to do some stamping – also with acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium.

The basket weaving stamping

Potato masher stamping. 

After re-heating, the stamp comes back to normal.  I used the toaster to heat and re-heat my stamp.
All in all it worked out okay but the stamp has to be very indented so as the relief parts stamp well.
Lessons were learned.

Then it was Lilian’s turn to paint. 

Then we did some bare foot cooking. Pumpkin scones.