Paper weaving.

The other set of artwork we did in November was paper weaving which I feel has thrown up some great ideas for quilts - particularly optical illusion quilts.
This first sample was weaving inside a shape which was based on one of the shapes from my 1960s plates. I really like the almost 3D effect that you get.

This one is weaving using curved pieces, the black strips are curvy and the coloured strips are straight.

This one is weaving a photo with plain strips.

This one is done using strips of varying widths.

I think that there are lots more ways that I could explore possible quilt designs using weaving as a basis. I have actually got a book on woven quilts coming from Santa and will be making some samples when I have had a good chance to study it.

Image Transfer

In November we had two topics in our Research for Design module. The first of these was Image Transfer including digital image manipulation.
I am going to share some of the artwork out of my folder.
As you will already be aware I love Andy Warhol art and this is my take on it using Jonathan's photo.

Below is the original photo. Details of the software I used are on my other blog.

More image manipulation - I liked the way this one squared up the details on the image which may be useful for patchwork design.

This one took away the colour and gave a pencil sketch effect. I have printed this onto a transfer paper which I am then going to recolour before transferring onto fabric.

The photo of this cat has been transferred onto fabric using white emulsion paint. You paint onto the fabric, place the photo onto it face down, smooth using a roller, allow to dry and then peel off the photo. Works surprisingly well!
I also tried to transfer images using acrylic wax instead of the paint - these were disasters!

A montage in the Andy Warhol style.

Images printed onto brown paper.

Images printed onto hand made paper.


Other methods I used were printing onto lightweight vilene, printing directly onto cotton, and using image transfer crayons. You will see the results of these in the samples I have made which I will show soon.

Last two samples from October.

These are the remaining samples from last month's theme which was using materials which distorted when heated.
The first sample is a montage of some of the techniques I experimented with - what I really mean is that these are the bits I had left over which I didn't want to throw away!

I made a background from watercolour paper coloured with drawing inks which I stitched together to look like a patchwork background. The samples are all machine stitched to the paper background. There are lutradur leaves which are painted but not heated, a tyvek and fibretex sample, a foil sample and a lutradur skeleton leaf sample.
I am quite pleased with the result but it will probably go into my 'Research for Design' file rather than my 'Machine Embroidery' Collection.

The final sample is made using 'teabag foil' which shrivels when it is heated. This is literally the packaging that surrounds some teabags, last year I used foil crisp packets. You have to experiment because not all foil shrivels when it is heated.

It is based on one of my 1960s plates again but I decided to use this printed fabric as a background to experiment with my machine quilting. It was a very useful exercise in quilting in circles and quite enjoyable. It also produced one of my favourite samples!

Lutradur and Xpandaprint samples.

I am starting to work on this month's samples and have realised that I still have four completed samples to share from last month.
Here are the first two.
This first one is using xpandaprint which is a thick white fluid that you paint onto your fabric and when you heat it it puffs up to give a spongy texture. I decided to try stamping into it with my leaf stamp and this worked very well.
I then painted the leaf and background using acrylic paints, leaving the areas where the stamp had touched the background without any paint.

I then cut around the leaf shape and appliqued it to the background using satin stitch.
The background fabric was decorated using the same stamp, using fabric paints.
Next the background had to be decorated with some more of those wacky machine embroidery stitches. Moss stitch has been worked around the immediate area surrounding the leaf. This is done by producing big loops with the bobbin thread and then removing the top thread to just leave the loops. I then had to iron some vilene onto the back to make sure it didn't all unravel!
Whip stitch is worked in the outer areas, this is another stitch where you can see the bobbin thread on the top but is not as pronounced as whip stitch which I did on the tyvek sample!

I am still not sure whether I like these weird machine stitches but I was pleased to see that Alice Kettle has used them in some of her new work which was on show at The Knitting and Stitching show at Harrogate.

The second sample is made using lutradur leaves. I used the same leaf string print to print leaves onto lutradur. I then cut them out and appliqued them onto this green and yellow four patch block using metallic thread. I also stitched the veins in the leaves. I then free machined in a spiral design in metallic thread - this was a nightmare as the thread kept breaking. The spirals were meant to be much smaller but the thread broke even more if I tried to make them smaller. I then used a heat gun to burn away some of the lutradur - this left a lacy effect which allowed the background to show through which I thought worked well.