Stitching the Border

I thought I would show you a close up of the border as I am stitching it. You can see the black Frixion pen markings that I followed.




I decided not to do the curlicue stitching between the border around the center and the major fancy horseshoe design.  It was too small to see, I thought and didn't enhance the appearance. I just stitched right over the markings.




I'm always glad when I get to a point that I can press the piece and get rid of the markings. They make it look messy and I get sick of that look. Here it is after pressing, and you can see the difference. It looks a lot cleaner.




I should be done with the rest of the border soon. I'll show you that in my next post. Thanks for visiting my blog!

Tin Tile Background Enhancement

I decided to do stitching to enhance the tin tile image in the background of the Flamingo piece. I used a meandering, tightly stitched pattern. To help me see the image better I used a Frixion marker to draw the lines of the design. Then I stitched the area around this design thoroughly. Here are some in-progress photos:











My thought while doing this small stitching is "one-eighth inch spacing". That helps me keep the size of the open areas consistent. The center is done now. On to the border design area! I'll post that when it is done. Thanks for visiting my blog!

It’s a Wonderful Life – Face, Hair and Hands

"It's A Wonderful Life"

My last post showed how I created the drawing of me holding the fish. Once I had the drawing completed and enlarged, I had to figure out how to create it with fabric.

I decided to paint my face, hair and hands on white “prepared for dyeing (PFD)” fabric using Tsukeniko inks. A Frixion pen was used to draw the major features of my face, hair and hands on the fabric and then I put "No Flow" on the fabric to prevent bleeding of the inks.

face drawn on PFD

The inks were mixed together to create a flesh-tone that is close to my coloring.  I mixed the paints so that I had some light, medium and dark flesh values. The flesh tone inks were applied going from lightest value to darkest value. I am a watercolorist and that is my natural progression for painting.

One Hand

The Other Hand

I added some blue to the shadow areas in addition to the flesh tones. I like the look of the addition of cool blues to warm skin shadows. My lip coloring was the red that I used in the flesh tone mixture.

Face Painting

I didn't have to paint eyes since I was wearing sun glasses, so I mixed some dark blues and browns for the glasses and frames. My hair coloring was a combination of light, medium and dark browns.

The paintings of hands and faces were cut out and applied as you would any other  raw edge applique piece.

I should mention that I mix my inks with aloe vera gel and apply it to the fabric with paint brushes. This method is comfortable for me given my painting background. There are many people who prefer other techniques and that is fine. You need to use what works for you.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Bonsai Trunk

For today’s post I’m writing about how I made the tree trunk for the Bonsai fiber art piece that I show above. As I mentioned before, I made this from a watercolor painting I had done. My favorite part of the tree is its' trunk.  In particular, I love the twisted appearance of it, and I thought I captured that in the painting.   I wanted to make sure I got that same look in the fiber version of this, so I decided to make the trunk by painting it, the same way I did in the watercolor painting.

I used an ivory raw silk fabric for the trunk.

raw silk fabric

I cut out the trunk shape and marked the darkest areas with a Frixion pen. I wanted to start painting with my lighter values, so I mixed a pale yellow and pale mauve shade and started applying to the trunk. I used my watercolor painting as a guide for the placement of the colors. After painting the light values I put in mid-values and then dark values. I mixed the inks with aloe vera gel to give them more viscosity and prevent bleeding. After the dark values were in I came back and added some aqua blue for highlights on the trunk in a couple locations.

ink painting

watercolor painting

To set the paint I pressed the fabric. Then I hand appliquéd the trunk to the background fabric. I marked the outlines of the trunk on the orange background fabric so I would get the placement correct. I used a needle-turn appliqué technique with silk thread. I found it difficult to needle-turn the raw silk because it frays more than cotton. But I did the best I could and persevered! I had several branch openings to stitch down and some of these edges did not look great, but I knew I was going to add foliage to that area and those edges would be covered. It worked out and I was pleased with the look of it after it was done.

trunk stitched down

My next steps were adding the table and pot that the plant is in. I will describe those steps in an upcoming post. Thanks for visiting my blog!

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!