Rinsing and Sandwiching

My last post showed the painting of the birds and cup with inks and painting medium. After I finish the painting, I press the painted fabric with an iron to set the inks, and then I rinse the fabric in cool water in the sink. Rinsing is an optional step and its purpose is to remove excess painting medium.  I have done some Internet research and found that many people don't bother to rinse after fabric painting.  Some rinse because they are concerned that the painting medium they have used may yellow over time and change the appearance of the painting. Others don't bother rinsing because they have fabric paintings that have been around for a long time that were never rinsed with no ill effects. I sometimes rinse and sometimes don't. If I think rinsing might damage an image, then I don't rinse. If I think the image is safe, then I rinse. I would rather take my chances on yellowing over time than to have to redo the painting.

I'm rinsing in this case because I noticed that the inks looked a little shiny in one area. I have no idea why they look shiny. It might be the color of ink in that area, mixed with the medium, resulted in shiny-ness. Or perhaps I used too much medium?? Not sure???? Anyway,  I thought if I rinsed the fabric then the shiny-ness might go away. But it didn't....So I have decided that the shiny-ness is a desired feature for this piece. Problem solved!

Here is the painted fabric in the sink. I put it in there for a few minutes and then remove it. I roll the wet fabric in a towel to remove water quickly, and then blow dry or iron dry it immediately. Although nothing is supposed to bleed, I fear that leaving water in the fabric a long time is tempting fate and I might get bleeding of the inks. So dry it quickly and no worries!

soaking in the sink

towel drying

My next step is sandwiching and quilting. That will be the next post. Thanks for visiting my blog!

My Cup Ranneth All Over... - Painting the Main Objects

I'm continuing the description of how I made this 12" x 12" mini fiber art piece that I call "My Cup Ranneth All Over the Patio". My last post showed the background fabric and tracings that I had done of the bird and cup outlines. It also described the inks I used to paint. 

Below you see the painted images of the main subjects. These are the steps I used to paint the images:

1) Paint around the border of the traced images with "No Flow". This product prevents bleeding into the surrounding fabric.

2) After the No Flow dried, I painted the bird bodies using a light reddish brown ink mixed with painting medium. I used Jo Sonja's Textile Medium for this. Some of the background color was already in the bird body area, so I didn't have to add too much of this ink. 

3) Next step was to paint the shadow areas of the birds using a mixture of dark blues, dark brown reds and a touch of purple.  I also painted the shadow areas of the cup with a similar mixture. These mixtures were blended with  painting medium before applying to the fabric.

4) Lastly,  I added some mid value colors to the feet, beaks, feathers and cup areas.

Here is the painting at this stage:

The objects look good to me, although they are floating in space. I need to ground them by putting some shadows beneath the birds and cup. I like my light source coming from the right, so that was what I depicted here. The shadows were painted using the same paint mixture I used on the dark areas of the birds and cup.

Next post will cover setting the inks, rinsing, basting, etc.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Cup Runneth All Over...Getting Ready to Paint!

When painting images on fabric I like to use a  background fabric that is lighter in value but  has some variation in color that I can use as part of the painted image. I hope you know what I mean by that, so here is an example. I knew I wanted my doves to be done in tans for the lighter areas and purple mauves for the dark values. I looked for a background fabric in my stash that would work with that. I found this piece shown below.

I painted this piece last year in my backyard using watered down acrylic paints. I was trying to get a "rusted" look without acutally doing the rusting process. I didn't completely achieve that but I liked the result anyway.

I had my drawing on paper, so I just placed the background fabric over the drawing on a light table, and traced the outlines of the image on the fabric. I took some time to figure out the best placement for the image relative to the colorations in the fabric. I used Frixion pens for the tracing since I knew they could be removed with an iron. Here you can see one bird and the cup.

My next step is to select the ink colors I wanted to use for the birds. These are Tsukineko Inks. I chose dark blues, violets, reddish browns, tans and peach colors.

Below  I also show my ink painting palette, brushes that I used and medium.