I already had a couple of 8x10 pieces of cotton muslin that had already been fused to batting and had a coat of gesso applied. I made them a few years back in preparation for painting, before I knew that I could just apply acrylic paint directly to fabric!

As I needed to get these done lickety split (I was up in the studio at 6:30 before leaving, whipping something together quickly to take!) I decided to work with aquarelles - so having a gesso'd background was perfect.

As you can see, I just lightly stroked on some colour with the side of the aquarelle.


And then I brushed them with a large-ish watercolour paintbrush loaded with water. I had one that wasn't clean, and made that dark grey mark, which initially made me gasp; but turned out to be a happy accident. I liked it and added it to both pieces.

The watercolour dried to the touch almost immediately, which was great, because I had to pop them in the folder, into my bag, and off we went!


I had this idea for an embroidered box behind the tree. Ordinarily, I would have stitched the box first and then added the tree, but I had to go, so I applied the tree first and then started stitching.


Here I've added some little flowers...

Some of you may remember that just prior to our move in May, I was working on a long, skinny piece, that had started its life as failed long, skinny piece that I was going to hand stitch. It didn't work out, and I had left it languishing. I was looking for something "fast" to finish before I had to pack up my studio, but apparently, it wasn't fast enough, because I didn't get 'er done!

So last week, I thought I'd drag it out and finish it.

Generally, when I do a figure, I sketch him in my sketch book, trace over him/her with tracing paper, use the tracing paper as a pattern, and then cut out the figure on my lutradur (or whatever substrate it is that I'm using).

But that's a fairly laborious process, and this was just a little rabbit, so I decided to draw him directly on the lutradur this time. It meant that I had to draw him twice (I screwed up the first one), but it was still much faster this way.

And then it was time to paint. First I picked my paint palette...

Because THIS was the original.  Can you believe she even wanted it? lol)

(By the way - check out the difference between my my old Sony point-and-click [which is a pretty great camera for what it is] and my brand-new-last-week-Nikon!)

Before the curator even asked me for it, the fact is, I had already said to myself that it needed more "stuff" in it and could use some improving, so I'm glad I had a reason to do it!


So I got out my new favourite (lutradur), and painted some up! First, I made a fanciful little octopus, and then I made a conch that I'm pretty happy with (!)...

I bumped up the foliage by adding more sea grass and darkening it all up...



Adding some more details to the little sea bushes (I have no idea what those things are called)...



So I mixed up some paint and painted over it.  Much better even if the green is slightly off.


I completely started over with the mermaid skin/body (the old one didn't even have a face!) and since I had made a young mermaid for Little Karoo, I decided to make this mermaid more mature.


And I gave her a pet/friend to look at!

All in all, much better, no? What do you think?

I had hoped to show you a finished piece today, but I grossly underestimated how long it would take me to braid enough embroidery floss to make the mermaid's hair - not to mention, some of the hand quilting I've done hasn't turned out so well, so I need to re-do it. :SIGH:




But I DID make some rocks. I knew I knew how to do it, and I thought if I pulled out By The Sea from last year, just looking at those rocks would remind me how I did it. That didn't work - I pulled them out, petted them, and thought "how pretty", but couldn't remember how I did them, exactly.



Bu then I found and  read my own instructions on how to make them (gee, I'm glad that this is a process blog!), except, this time, I broadened the colours of roving that I used, and put them on a gray silk background, rather than stablizer and pinned 'em all up.


Since I didn't have very much of that grey scrim left, I inserted into my rocks for more texture instead.

Once I had it all pinned down, I needle felted it.



And when I was done, I had this piece of fabric. It was  sooooooooo SOFT, I just wanted to pet it like a bunny. :)  Alas, I needed to cut it up...



...into rock shapes.

Which I put onto some fabric I wouldn't use for much else (a heavy cotton upholstery fabric sample I was gifted by a friend - said friend gave me banker's box full of such samples and they've come in very handy in a lot of applications.

There's a lot of that stuff in the "America Now" series, for instance. Painting them over covers a multitude of sins!)



But back to this piece, my rocks  needed to be on that background, because I wanted to quilt them before I put them on my painted background.

So, we're getting closer!

I have to finish braiding Ms. Mermaid's hair and fix up my hand quilted elements - and though I've added the washes I talked about last week to take my background from early morning to the night I intended, I think I have to add two more washes of purple and blue (and maybe teal) to the sky to further differentiate it from the cliff.

But, we're in the home stretch now! Finished piece on Wednesday or maybe Friday.

Until then...

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.


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:



 Hope you had a good weekend!

You know, for a first effort at painting on cloth, I'm pretty chuffed with this result!  I was just kind of playing with the paint on the cloth, trying to figure out what it would do - not really trying to achieve anything in particular, so when the "plain" cloth as it was, was so clearly meant to be this ...


all I needed were my charcoal sticks (the bottom row in the pic above) and some pastels (top middle section).


And of course, some thread!




As I added the charocal and pastels to the piece and it revealed itself more fully to me, I thought about time.  How it moves, how we think we are standing still in it, and yet it changes us without our even knowing, moving us along to a place that's new.  If we resist that movement, standing firm in the place we've claimed, it will wear us down until we no longer exist.


But if we embrace it, let it take us where it will; we will all be made softer, purer with age ... and the kindness of erosion.

So, I've continued to work with fabric paint, this time without the soy wax.  I ended up with this:



But I didn't leave it like that of course, I went to work on it with the tools you see under it in my drafting table (yes, those would be fugitive media items!)....




and after some judicious application of charcoal and pastels, I painted over it with the 50/50 blend of base extender and hung it up to dry.  Finished piece tomorrow!


And as for the winner of the tote bag and the name that quilt contest:

Shimmerwood Forest wins!  Email me at kit.lang.ltd@gmail.com with your colour choices and your snail mail address!



And Ms Lottie - you too win a prize, only because you had me giggling so hard.  I very nearly named the quilt "Robert" because it tickled me so much!

So you win one of my little lunch bags - they're plastic lined with a drawstring top and button closure.





Let me know what colourway you'd like at the same email address above.

Congrats to the winners!