My little darling is now in the shop - the scanner got rid of "70 known threats" but there were 102 found!

I love that a service such as The Geek Squad exists, but they're not cheap! $314 up front (to get rid of the virus, and save my files) and possibly more when I pick her up.  Sheesh!

However, life is short - as per The Holstee Manifesto, above, so I've found lots to do in the meantime.  :)
I'll see you in a couple of days!

EEP!

I'm not quite back from vacation yet, but I have been checking in online from time to time, and I clicked on link to see what Kate Middleton was wearing and my laptop blew up!!!

Okay, it didn't really blow up, but (literal) sirens went off, and I got all these notices from Norton, Windows Firewall and Windows Defender that said versions of "YOU ARE UNDER ATTACK". 

And then Whoopi appeared and said:

(Okay, she didn't, but I seriously was expecting her to.) :D

That was last night about 7:30 p.m. and currently, my 'lil laptop (who I call BabyBelle) is STILL running a full PC scan and finding all kinds of issues.

I may have to bring her into the shop tomorrow but I'm not sure how long that sort of thing takes, so I may not have a post for you on Monday.

In the meantime, enjoy your fabulous post-turkey days (if you celebrate) and remember - be careful out there, 'cuz you could be in DANGER gurl!"

Leavin, on a jet plane...

With apologies to John Denver. :) But before I go, I thought I'd show you this:

I couldn't pick up the gloriously glossy effect that this fabric has as I'm not yet that skilled a photographer - but it's really lovely.  This is another fabric I made (36 x 24 or so) with the disperse dye/transfer paint method that I'm demonstrating over at And Then We Set It On Fire this month.

For the piece above, I tore my papers into rough bits and then overlaid them individually onto the fabric and ironed them. It was a very lengthy process, which is when I came up with the idea of gluing them down first - which is what I did here. 

I cut all of my bits of painted fabric into roughly rectangular shapes and then glued them to another piece of paper paint side up.

(I had already written on the backs of the papers their colours so I would know what the heck I was doing - as I was laying them down they all looked sort of blackish or blueish as you can see)  Anyway, when that was done:

I ironed for this "ta da" moment.  (This printed part of the fabric is about 30 inches wide and 26 or so tall).

Remember if you're trying this at home, that the key points are as follows:

1.  I used pre-mixed transFER paints (not transPERSE paints) as well as disperse dyes. The latter is my preferred method.

I used IDye for my disperse dyes (the link is for a Canadian store but I believe you can also get it at Dharma Trading) but  any powdered dye that is meant for polyester fabric will do.

I mixed the powders to the following method:

a) 1 tsp for pale

b) 2 tsps for medium

c) 4 tsps for dark

d) 8 tsps for black

I mixed the IDye with a 1/2 cup of boiling water and two drops of synthrapol.

For an effect like watercolours on fabric, I thinned this mixture with another 1/2 cup of water and once cooled, painted my papers.

Both mixtures gave GREAT results with print after print, with no smell and virtually no mess.

I had the best results BY FAR using paper from a sketchbook rather than bond (photocopy paper). I found the heat process bound the colour to the bond paper (that's what photocopy paper is for, after all!) whereas the colour just sat on top of sketchbook paper. However, you don't want to use a really good quality sketchbook paper as the colour will then sink into the texture of the paper rather than sit on top.

With the photocopy paper I only got one or two prints, whereas with the sketchbook paper I've had so far - endless results (each paper has been printed at least six times and some of them have been printed 20 or more times!)

2.  The higher the amount of 'man made' material in the fabric, the better result you'll have.  I had the very best result with 100 polyester silk.  I also tried a sheer polyester tulle with a very dark value paper which produced a really lovely see through print.

3. Don't forget to try different things with your papers - using resists, cutting out shapes or tearing the fabric into odd pieces, mixing your colours directly on the papers and using tools with the application of the paint.

I have finger painted it with multiple colours on one sheet, combed it and then spattered it and then smooshed it on top of all of that and had a fantastic resulting paper. For instance I painted a paper yellow, then laid pink over top, combed it, and then dropped "stripes" of orange with a heavily paintbrush in long swoops across the page - lightly smooshed it with the flat of my hand and that produced an amazing beautifully multi-coloured and patterned 70's funky cloth.

4. When you're actually making the cloth, I start by using a heavily padded surface on my table and putting a sheet of craft paper over it, then laying the fabric on it "good" side up, and then putting the painted paper(s) face down on the cloth, and then put another, bigger paper on top of it all to keep the iron clean.  While you're working, keep the iron moving, keep the iron HOT HOT HOT(no matter what the fabric requirements are - you have two layers of paper between the fabric and the iron to protect it)

9. The longer you press and/or the more pressure you apply when you press, the more brilliant your result is.  (For me, with arthritic hands, elbows and shoulders, pressure was problematic, so if I wanted brilliant colour, I just increased the time).

So, the top piece, with it's lighter colours, was less pressure and time, and the bottom piece was done with more time.

However.

You have to experiment a LOT until you get a piece that you're finally happy with. Be prepared for a lot of craptastic results when you first start doing this.  Once you figure out the appropriate amount of pressure, heat and fabric though, you're off to the races and you'll love the results and variability you'll get.

I know lots of quilters and even art quilters have an innate prejudice against using fabric that isn't "best quality quilter's cotton" but as you know, I have NEVER adhered to that rule, I don't even understand the rule.  Certainly, you don't want to put cheap cloth in your work whether bed quilts or art quilts, because the fabric will degrade and the colours will fade or the fabric will pill after the first or second wash.

However, good quality fabric of ANY kind will last a couple of hundred years in an art piece, and maybe even that long in a gently used bed quilt, so don't worry about it!

____________________________________________________________________________

So, I'm off on vacation again (spoiled girl that I am) this time to Savannah for a week, so I'll see you next Thursday or so, and hope you all have a good week in the meantime!

Cheers,

More experiments

I have been working on other experiments over the past couple of weeks with transfer paints/disperse dyes.  For this piece (36 x 24 or so), I couldn't pick up the gloriously glossy effect that this fabric has as I'm not yet that skilled a photographer - but it's really lovely. 

For this piece I tore the painted papers into pieces and then laid a piece down, ironed it, laid another piece on top, ironed it  -  with a fairly light hand onto the fabric, a quite laborious proces, but a result I was quite pleased with. 

The beginnings of another painted quilt...

I thought I'd try painting on silk twill again - only this time, I used fabric paints rather than watercolours. It's nearly dry in the pic above, so I'll be setting it aside soon for quilting.  (But maybe first I'll fix the persepctive on that rail fence - maybe thicken it up and add some more leaves!)

However, to get to the how to - I  started with about 1/4 tsp. white fabric paint and added just a drop of azure blue to about a 1/4 tsp base extender.

Mixed up, it looked like this. A lovely pale greeny blue.  I forgot to take pics as I went along (I got so into what I was doing) - but on the cloth it looked like white, with just the slightest hint of blue - which is what I wanted for the clouds.

Then I used my handy dandy mini colour wheel to mix up some other colours.

A blue-er blue for the sky (remember, with fabric paints, all colours look wayyyyy more intense on the pallete than they'll end up on your fabric - but do some test swatches to get more comfortable.) Here are from left red/orange/blue (for those burgundy orangey leaves) copenhagen blue and goldenrod for a green, goldenrod and azure blue for another green, and just plain straight from the bottle green - all were mixed with base extender to produce:

Which were all of the leaves.  Unfortunately, I just mixed as I went to make the browns and the greys, which was really dumb of me because now I have to figure out how to make some more grey, greige and beige that matches my already existing fence.  (gulp!)

Wish me luck on that, and btw, how are all of you?

 Hope you had a good weekend!

Always a bridesmaid...

.....never a bride.

The third time I've thrown my hat into the ring, and the third time I didn't win. *cue the "whah, whah, whah" music*

I'm happy (?) to announce that  Off to Oz - my entry in the Generation Q Magazine's Scrap Splat Challenge, placed second. Congrats to Flaun Cline on her win. (Her quilt really is quite lovely.)

But, can I just say: "AGAIN with the second place?"  Perhaps one day I'll do a 27 Dresses type thing about all of my failed quilts.

Or maybe I'll just stop entering contests!  *heh*

Talk soon!

Fern... a sketch

Happy Monday!

I mentioned in September that I've been asked to guest host a month at And Then We Set It On Fire... and November is my month. The process we're learning together this month is transfer paint/disperse dye.

I posted the initial instructions last week, and this is my first finish using this technique.

I began by using this mottled yellowy brown background - which I created by first covering my paper with orange transfer paint,  then adding stripes of yellow disperse dye over that, and over it all, droplets of brown dispere dye.  I then smooshed all the colours together by making a pouncing motion with the flat of my hand.  Once it was dry, I ironed it to my fabric. (To get a more intense colouring, I would have had to iron longer - but I wanted this mild version.)

Next, I used this orange/yellow combo (as above) and ironed sections of  it over the mottled mustardy-yellow background.

This paper (now dry) is a combination of greens.  The same disperse dye green, "au naturel" on the left,  mixed with a little black on the right and a little blue on the blackish looking streak/drips on top.  (All the mixing was done while wet.)  I have to say, this particular paper is my favourite - it produces a nice yellow green, a brilliant blue-green and a leaf green - all in the same paper! I think I've used it on every single piece of fabric I've produced for the Fire tutorials (and that's about 30 pieces of fabric - so far! - which goes to show how many times you can re-use these papers.)

I got a fern from the garden and used it as a resist before laying different sections of the green paper above all over it. ( By the way -  when ironing - I've been using a padded surface, a piece of craft paper, my fabric, the transfer dye paper, and then tracing paper over that to protect the iron - and the iron has to be dry, hot and constantly moving with good pressure to get good results.)

After quilting, I added some pastel dye sticks, watercolour dye crayons and a gold leaf pen to enhance, and then decided to add some beads - for once leaving them on!

And that was it! Big fun - I highly recommend it. :)

Playing...

So, at the beginning of October, I was picking up supplies (dye stuff and things for my learning/teaching  guest posting over at And Then We Set It On Fire), and there were a few other things I popped into my bag as well that I thought might be fun to play with - among them some discharge paste.

I'd never used it before but thought a piece of cloth like the above one would be perfect for an experiment.  It was a double- fail dyeing experiment - failed in that it didn't turn out anything like what I was shooting for, and doubly failed in that it was a BORING fail. (Could there be a worse failure?)

So, discharge paste to the rescue and then ...

GIVEAWAY RESULTS!

I just realized I said I'd post this today, so I wrote all your names down on little pieces of paper, folded them up in equal sizes and asked my co-worker to pick one.

She picked ::drumroll::

Heidi said...

I wasn't totally interested until I read that blurb! LOL! Very intriguing now!

So Heidi, shoot meet an email with your snail mail addy and I'll be sending you a gifty! :)