Distant Buildings and Oil Paint Stick

I thought I would show how I use oil paint stick on my fiber art pieces. In this black and white landscape I decided to put some adobe like buildings on the hillsides. I have sketched buildings like these on trips to Arizona.
















As you can see in this photo, I used a printed light brown fabric for the buildings themselves. I drew the buildings first, laid the fabric over the drawing on my light pad, drew the outlines on the fabric, and then cut out the shapes. I turned the edges under on most of the sides of the buildings. I also layered them or placed them next to each other to give the look of many different spaces in the structure. The windows or doors were cut out of the light brown fabric. I placed a black fabric behind the opening and glued it in place to hold it until I stitched.





I wanted to add a lighter side to the buildings to give a more true appearance, so I used an oil bar in a lighter value to that side. Oil bar is a semi-solid oil paint in a stick. The part open to the air hardens and you have to cut it off each time before you use it. After I cut off the hardened end, the soft paint is available. You can apply the bar to the fabric directly or use a stiff brush to gather some paint from the stick and put it on the fabric.

For this case I used a paint brush because the area to be painted was small and the bar would have been too large for it.









This is the oil bar I used for this project.















You can see me getting some paint from the stick here. I'm using a stiff short stencil brush.











I am applying the oil paint below. I put it on the sunny side of the building shapes and I put some on the black windows or doors to give a little variation.

I like the overall effect of this. It takes three days to dry, so I work on something else during those days. There is an odor of the paint that lasts for a couple of weeks, but it also goes away.  I don't use any solvents with this, just the paint. I've never had a problem with the paint getting on another part of the quilt after I've applied it either.

Perhaps an oil bar will work for you on one of your projects?

Thanks for visiting my blog!

It's Easier the Second Time Around!

I never appreciated before how much easier it is to make an art quilt when the design is already done. I didn't have to spend time on sketching to decide on the design, I just had to pull out my drawing and have it enlarged to my desired finished size, which was about 18" x 22". I also knew already what colors the various design elements were going to be, so there was nothing to figure out there either. This art quilt is made from 90% black and white fabrics and 10% gold toned fabrics. I rummaged through my fabric stash bins and found almost all of the original fabrics that I had used previously. I show the fabrics I pulled from my stash below:





















I needed to piece the black and white background first. It required a white sky, and black or black/white hills and foreground.

I cut out the various sections and glued them to a piece of white muslin. The photos below show some of this work:






Here you see me in the process of gluing a layer down:

 You can see the blobs of glue on the white muslin that is the support for the background fabric.

This is the glue I am using:















I squirt the glue on a white plastic disposable plate and then use a small flat paint brush to apply it. I learned this technique from Susan Carlson. I love it and now I use glue rather than fusibles in many cases.  Here is a photo of the plate and brush:



My next step is to make the buildings in the distance. That I'll save for my next post. Thanks for visiting my blog!