Fabric Painting...........practice

I recently signed up for an on-line class, involving painting on fabric. I'll talk more about the class and the projects later, but for now I want to show you what I did this weekend. I watched the videos and while I wanted to dive right in to the project, I decided to do a couple of little sample bits first, to get the feel and to discover what products I liked best. I don't have the "floating" medium used by the instructor, so I wanted to test what I did have on hand.
I began by drawing a simple leaf, with paper backed fusible on the wrong side I cut these out and fused them to a background fabric.


All of the leaves would be painted using the same paints, but for each, these paints were mixed with a different medium. (Fabric sucks up paint very quickly, a medium is necessary, it gives you more time to work with the paint, move it easily and helps with the ability to blend the colours.)
This first leaf was painted using clear aloe-vera gel mixed into Seatacolor transparent paint. Isn't it amazing how just a little paint can transform fabric? I have played with, and talked about using Aloe Vera gel before, those posts are here


For the middle one I used a colourless extender made by Jacquard and the third was a mixture using an acrylic glazing liquid by Golden.


While this was not part of the class, I found that I learned a great deal from this simple exercise. In my next post, I'll tell you what some of those things were and show where I went from here.

ATC swap

If you read my last post and went over to the Quilting Gallery, you know that there is an Artist Trading Card "swap" planned. Registration is now open, click here or on this button to learn more and possibly join in.
Here are some of my finished ones. These are from those transfer printed doodles on paper towel/quilting experiment I did.

I had a few little leftover bits.....too small for an ATC even.....or were they? I always have some small quilt sandwiches lying around that I use to practice FMQ. So I cut one up and stitched those small leftovers onto them and they are now ATCs as well.


Then there was this one......hmmmmm needs something.........


how about just adding a few little discs? I think that worked quite well.

Do you wanna know?

Are you still curious about what I was going to do with this?
If your answer is Yes......pop on over to the Quilting Gallery, where I am today's guest blogger, click here to see just what I was up to.

here is a little hint

Image Transfer

There are several ways to transfer an image to fabric, some can be time consuming, others can get a little expensive. Today I am talking about one of the least expensive and quickest methods of all, and that is done using T-shirt transfer paper. It is a great option for the times when you need to get the job done quick. I must mention that this method will change the hand of your fabric somewhat, but I am finding that they have greatly improved and don't leave the fabric feeling quite so "plastic-y" as they did just a few years ago. The paper I used for my current projects, is by Avery, but many retailers may have their own store brand as well. The Avery pack comes with very good, detailed instructions.I set up, by lowering my ironing board to a level that will allow me to stand over it and put good, even pressure while bearing down with my iron.
I slip a solid board into a pillowcase, this becomes my actual ironing surface and as you can see by the top photo, excellent results were achieved on a variety of fabrics, including papertoweling. That hard surface is the key to success.

I experimented a little beyond simply printing on it and I thought I show you the results. There are always little leftover bits when you trim around the image before pressing.....DON'T throw them out, you can't put them back through the printer, but you CAN still play with them.
Here I took a leftover bit and drew on it with a simple ball point pen.
Now, I could have transferred that as is, but I wanted to take it a step further. I got out some of my acrylic inks and did a wash over the paper........that workedso then I tried brushing those inks on the paper and once it had dried, I drew on it......that worked too!

And here they are after being transferred to fabrics..........I'll do a bit of stitching and likely turn these into postcards.



As I said there are several varieties of transfer papers on the market, you need to test them and decide what works best for you and the results you wish to achieve..........and yes, I have tried TAP........I blogged about it here.

Going in Circles

I am working on a quick little project, that I can't really share just yet, but I thought I'd give you a bit of a peek.
Just for the fun of it, I drew lots of overlapping, various sized, circles and then filled them in with doodles.I scanned it into my computer, it was then printed onto transfer paper and ironed onto some of my pieces of painted paper towelingI LOVE the way the blended colours show through those bold, black graphic lines.then I quilted

you will have to wait just a little while to see what this becomes.

Quatrefoil

Yes! I said Quatrefoil.....that was this week's Creative Prompt word.......do you think Jaye is really trying to challenge us?
A short time ago, I was admiring some pretty pincushions that Mary over at Quilt Hollow had been making and I was quite tempted to make one of my own.....so when I saw the prompt word, I knew I had to make this.perhaps, even the button could be considered a Quatrefoil