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Friday, August 16, 2013
Monday, June 17, 2013
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 
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.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
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.
++++++++++++++++++++
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.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
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!!
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!!
Monday, April 22, 2013
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!
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!
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