Studio Kit

More experiments with stabilizer...

This time I've fused it, cut out my shapes, and then Ive painted it with full strength acrylic paint. Here it is drying on my drying table ('cuz where else would I dry it?) *s*

Of course as I was laying them out to dry, I realized, it would have been much more clever of me to paint it first and then cut out my shapes. But you know, why make things easier?

Here's hoping I'm more clever about the rest of the process... which you'll grt a peek at on Wednesday!

Until then...

All done!!!

All in all, I'm really pleased with this technique and I'm sure you'll see more of it in the pieces to come. For the next little while, I think, I'll be concentrating on painting the stabilizer and using it in these kinds of applications.

However, to recap what happened - I started out with my clean up cloth, which I interspersed with my "grid" pattern - I wanted it to represent an abstract city landscape.

Here is a close up of the actual organ grinder, which I first painted and then outlined with the "anime" pen (it's an artist's pen that's marketed for use for anime artists, but I can't remember what it's called). And his little painted gourd and other decorative elements, and his key to lock it up at the end of the day.

His face has a little sadness in it - as it would be I think; he is such an anachronism in our time - perhaps even the last of his kind - playing his music amongst the glass and steel...

And I had to show you his pants because I was so proud of them when I made them. As a beginning painter and one who is flying completely by the seat of her pants - when I did them, I worked intuitively, and in the end, I thought they looked quite good. Almost like a real painter!

But what it's taught me once again, is what I said at the beginning of the year - I need to take a drawing class and a water colour class!

Anyway, experiment done and I think he turned out rather well. I'm very pleased.

Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S. - Process posts here and here, and linking up with M-R of Quilt Matters for TGIFF -go check out what everyone's got finished this week!

You see, even though I'm playing, I wanted to continue to experiment with the possibilities of the stabilizer.

Here, you see the man in his more or less finished state, but I began the same way as with Trayvon's face...

Having first ironed fusible web to the stabilizer, peeled off the backing and put it on my glass, I sketched out my man in pencil and then cut him out using the heat tool.

And then I started painting him - right on the glass.

I used acrylic paint, blending to get the colours I wanted, and after this base was dry, I used an artist's (anime) pen to fill in the details - and speaking of details, I used a gold leaf pen on the rungs of the organ as well as in the decorative stars on it.

And I quilted the background with this great varigated thread that I've had forever and hadn't had a chance to use.

To see how it all comes together, come back on Friday!

And I'm linking up with the Needle And Thread Network - go check out what Canadians who work in fibre are up to!

I'm taking a little break from some of my work for upcoming exhibitions - I need to be a little less "serious" for awhile (not only in subject matter, but in my work approach);

So I took this little piece of linen I had that was used as a clean up cloth a couple of years ago and decided to have a play with it.

This gird is a good jumping off point...

And a good beginning usually leads to a good end!

More on Wednesday!

Ta dah!!!!

lol. I know, I know, you're probably saying "But Kit, it looks exactly like the old one!" And if you are, I'm delighted, because THAT WAS THE POINT of the last five weeks. Ai yi yi!

The interesting thing about this whole process was that the original one, in encaustic wax, took about ten minutes. The new one, which had to be hand drawn, blown up, copied, traced, painted, fused, cut, traced, etc. (ad nauseum) as I tried different fabrics, tried to distress said fabrics, tried different ways of applying them to the background, and struggled, STRUGGLED I SAY with getting the proportion of the face right - all in an effort to give the face A: the distressed look of the original and B: the proportionate look of the original has literally taken weeks and weeks of hours-every- day-work.

Here is the old one, in encaustic wax, to compare. Pretty good, huh?

I finished the background and background stitching on the supersized version at the beginning of May, including hand sewing on all of those letters in addition to fusing (again, I was afeared that the rolling and unrolling and shipping around the world would make them fall off), plus the hand stitched elements on this on a much larger scale, took forEVER.

Now, thanks to Jenny Wood and all of your helpful suggestions, it's finally done and looks as near as I can get to the original, using fused Pellon stabilizer (painted and then having some of the paint blotted up) as the base for that face.

(By the way, I DID try the original encaustic version too, but every time I rolled it up, more wax flaked off, so I couldn't take the risk. )

Here, you see the original in the left hand corner, with the scaled up version in behind it. As you can see, I STILL didn't get the proportion of the face quite right (it should be still larger), but given my time constraints (it has to be sent today) it was the very best I could do.

I thought about trying one more time to get the face the right size (on Tuesday, when this version of the face was completed) and decided I didn't have time - and boy - I was right!

Because, after the face was finished, I had to hand stitch it down, plus handstitch all the "blood", then I handstitched a few more circles to make up for the empty space, plus added another line of handstitching around the sharp angles on the left - and then I STILL had to close off the open side (I did an envelope back for this piece); so I finished the hanging sleeve and the bag for shipping last night, just before midnight.

That is cutting it TOO close!

And now, off it goes! *le phew* (I send it on its way with a kiss. *s*)

New work next week. Hurray! :)

How helpful and generous all of you are!

After my last post, I had several (nearly ten!) emails from people who privately offered me their collective wisdom in solving my "burning issues". I'll start by telling you how I temporarily solved them, and then share all of their great ideas!

So, when I left you last, I was trying to figure out a couple of things:
a:     where to get lutradur/what to use instead in my limited time frame; and
b:     what to use instead of Margaret Beal's heat tool.

The unspoken issues I had were:

a:    was it better to paint the substrate first and then put the fusible and then cut it out?
b:    should I put the fusible on before or after I cut and paint, or can it all be done at the same time?

To begin, when I asked Jennie where she got her Lutradur, she explained that, like me (I'd been looking for it for a project for Fire a couple of months ago) she hadn't been able to find it anywhere in Canada. So when she was in the UK a couple of weeks ago, she got a bolt of it.

When she pulled it out to cut a piece off for me, I said "It looks like Pellon stabilizer!"

And SHE said - "It's made by Pellon". And I smacked myself in the head, because I have three bolts of the stuff myself, in different weights, that I bought at the Creativ Festival a couple of years ago.

At the time, I thought I was going to do a lot more thread painting (I was very taken with an exhibition of it I had seen during Quilt National in 2009) but had never really gotten 'round to it.

When I got home, I realized that none of my weights were exactly like hers, but they were probably close enough to bright, so I went for it.

The first experiment was with the heaviest of the weights I had. I cut it first, and then painted it, and THEN added the fusibile and cut it out a second time. (Which is the first pic in this post.)

Then I tried painting the stabilizer, and fusing it, then cutting it, but I couldn't see through it without a light box. I don't have one, so I used my drafting table (glass top) and a desk lamp underneath - but it's not a user-friendly option unless you have a lightbox, so I wouldn't recommend painting the stabilizer first.

And speaking of, what did I cut it with, you ask?

Well, Jennie had very generously offered to lend me her burning tool to complete the project.

However, I had done some research, and decided that its closest cousin was the Dremel Wood Burning Tool Kit (which had an attachment with a very fine point - more on that later)

I also had a very light weight Pellon, nearly translucent, that had some fusible on it already. I had been fusing that Pellon to delicate silks and lightweight chiffons to enable me to work with them more easily in other applications in the past, so thought I'd give that one a go.

I knew that the small amount of fusible on it would be useless in this particular application, so I fused the Steam-A-Seam to it, cut it to size, and then peeled off the back, using that bit of sticky-ness to adhere it to the glass.

Then I slid the whole over my image (I took the original sketch, blew it up and darkened it at a professional copy place) and commenced to cut. It worked a dream! (And my head is already filled with other applications for my Pellon and my heat tool!)

You can see that I used the tool to make more marks to "scuff it up" as you may remember the orignal rendering looked very "abused" and I wanted that look rather than the "brand spanking new" look I got with other fabrics.

Here it is all cut on on the glass - remember, it already has the fusible attached!

Now - here are the hints from all of the generous people!

No sooner did I post, than Arlee Barr wrote me and suggested that I use the Walnut Hollow "Textile Tool", and a few people wrote and suggested the Creative Versa Tool by the same company. Liniecat sent me several emails with different suggestions for both tools and sources for Lutradur, and Beth Berman sent me info on how to enlarge my image. Others wrote me and made other helpful suggestions as well, from soldering irons to wood burning tools, a couple of you also suggested the Dremel Wood Burning kit I had already found.

Ladies - all of you - I'm truly touched by your generosity of spirit and helpfulness! Apparently, there's nothing we can't solve together. :)