Bonsai - Background Fabric

Bonsai

This is the background fabric that I used for my Bonsai:

background fabric

It was painted at a workshop with Teresa Shippy. Teresa conducts workshops each summer on tin tile fabric painting. She owns several tin tiles. These are the pretty tiles that are found on ceilings of some very beautiful buildings. The impression on the tin tiles is painted on to the fabric. To do the painting, you lays the tiles flat, then spread your fabric on it. Wet the fabric, apply paint and let dry. Once it is dry you then apply additional paint using a dry brush technique. The dry brush paint adheres to just the raised area of the tin tile, accentuating the impression on the fabric.

If you want to attend one of Teresa’s workshops check out her website - Teresa Shippy website  They are a great time and good value. You will come away with several fun backgrounds for art quilts.  I highly recommend them.

The process described above is what I did here using orange as my primary paint. The orange looks brown here, but trust me, its orange.  After the tin tile impression dried, I splattered on yellow paint using a Jackson Pollack technique -  fling it!  I love the look of this piece, especially the lost and found parts where the impression comes and goes.

tin tile impression

Once the background fabric was chosen it was time to transfer the image to it.  I traced the painting I had done and enlarged it.

tracing

Then I laid the orange fabric on my enlarged drawing and used a Frixion pen to mark the location of the key features. The Frixion pen erases with a hot iron, so its safe to use it without worry that the marks will show up later

enlarged drawing

 In my next post I will talk about the fabric palette that I chose for this art quilt. Thanks for visiting my blog!