Studio Kit

Charley Harper time!

A few/several months ago, I was participating in a Charley Harper QAL of sorts - hosted by Ethne at Flaming Stitches. She had gotten permission from the estate of Charley Harper for us to either copy directly or be inspired by his work.

I made two pieces - one inspired by and one a copy, and said at the time, I had one more to make. Well, here it is!

I made it in the same manner as the others, except that this time, after I fused the fabric, I drew the reverse image directly on the paper backing, and cut them out, rather than make a pattern and trace it. Why waste the step?

For the corn cob, I cut out strips of already fused fabric and then further cut them into little square-ish shapes, and then placed them by hand, using a tweezer.

After I had placed all the bits on my pieced background, I ironed them down (with a sheet of paper between the cloth and the bits) and when it had cooled, pinned it to my batting and backing.

And then I quilted the dog out of it.

So here are the other two:

This one's the direct copy:

This one's inspired by:

And this one is a blend of the two. All three will be framed and will hang in our bedroom.

So, yesterday, I showed you my latest piece, drying happily - I was quite pleased with it and was looking forward to working with the piece when it was rinsed and dried.

I mean, it looks so ... full of potential, right?

Well, as is my usual form, I experiment first, and look for directions later if my experiment didn't work out.

It didn't work out. *heh*

See, after I happily painted it, I thought "I wonder how you set the colour? I mean, if you heat it, the soy wax will melt all over the place, not to mention ' Hi honey. Sorry about the house being burned to the ground. See, I put this wax filled thing in the microwave and...." lol

So, I let it sit for 24 hours and hoped for the best. Broke up the soy wax and rinsed the rest off under hot water. And that was the sad, sad result.

*lets take a moment to mourn*

So, then I called the store where I bought the materials and they told me you have to roll it up in paper and steam it - over a pot of boiling water or with a clothes steamer.

I guess I'll do that NEXT time.

*heh*

So, yesterday, I showed you a sneak peek of some fabric paints. I've been wanting to play with fabric paints for quite some time, and because of Blogtoberfest, I now have to produce a lot of content, I thought I'd give it a shot and see what happens.

As you can see, I started out with some silk twill, a stretcher frame and some silk pins. Unsurprisingly, I began by stretching a piece of silk twill over the frame, pinned it down with the silk pins, and then used:

Soy wax and a tjanting tool, with which I drew my design on the silk. The soy wax can be seen in the picture above as all of the gray areas. I'm sorry I didn't think to take pictures as I went along, but you'd be surprised how a tool full of molten hot wax flushed thoughts of photography from my mind! ;)

and when the soy wax was dry, I used these fabric paints, diluted with base extender, to fill in my doodles.

It's drying now, let's see how it turns out tomorrow after it's been rinsed and set...

So you may remember that I was working on this piece a couple of weeks ago. First, I hand-painted my fabrics (a post on how to achieve this result is coming soon), but I was struggling with the leaf issue - I wanted it to look leaf-blown, but couldn't decide which leaf worked best...

I made a couple of different styles in a couple of different fabrics...

But finally decided that the "November-ness" of "November" was best expressed by no leaves at all.

Just a cold, Northern wind...

Oh, and the winner of two charm packs of Tula Pink's Neptune is:

Hiyacinth, who said "Terrific Tula Pink designs. They're so intriguing! " Congratulations Hiyacinth, email me your address and I'll send them along to you.

I'll be doing another giveaway very soon, so stay tuned...