Studio Kit

A portion of the experiment.... not much to say about it (as this is, overall, a very simple, if large piece) - so it's stablizer, painted cream, and cut out with the heat tool...

But the finished piece will be available for your viewing pleasure on Friday. :)

Joining in with other Canadian Fiber people at The Needle and Thread Network.

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!