Hawaiian Shirt

Roy is wearing a Hawaiian shirt in this picture, and he has a cigar case in his pocket. To recreate that look in fabric I started with a white-on-white fabric. I laid the fabric over my line drawing and penned in the light, medium and dark value areas. I used a Frixion pen for these lines so they would easily erase with an iron. I show the fabric below with the lines. I enhanced the color of the photo so that you could see the white on white pattern.



White on white fabric is very interesting when painted. The surface white design takes the color different from the background fabric, so it shows the white on white design more prominently.

I mixed together blues, pink-reds, and other colors in the shirt and started to paint away. I didn't paint areas that would be covered by the arm or other parts. Here is an in-progress photo:



The cigar case was made using the same green fabric I used for the hat.

Here is a photo of the shirt after the painting was completed:



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Marine Hat

This post is about the hat on my "Tough Old Bird" piece. As you can see, Roy is wearing a dark hat. It is actually a Marine hat, dark green with a gold emblem in the center front. The value contrast in the photo is very interesting to look at, so it's an important part of the ensemble.  I always start with an enlarged line drawing of my subject, and that is what I am showing below.




I outlined the light areas on the hat on the line diagram to make it easier to paint later.

I chose a commercial green fabric as the base for the hat. I placed the line drawing on a light pad, and laid the green fabric over the line drawing. Using a white chalk pencil, I traced the hat outline and marked the light value areas as well.

The green fabric is lighter than the hat color, so I mixed a darker green ink with aloe vera gel and applied it to the darkest areas on the hat. The lighter areas on the hat were made by painting the area with an aloe vera gel mixture of white ink mixed with some green ink. These photos show the hat in progress.

A few paint layers later, getting darker with each layer, I ended up with the hat shown below. I added gold paint to the emblem at a later stage to make it stand out a bit more. 

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Diva's Top

This is the photo that is my inspiration for this piece. I wanted to make the top and jeans very similar to that shown in the photo. For the top, I used a polka dot white on white fabric, shown here:

top fabric

I placed the fabric over my full size drawing, on top of a light table, and traced the outline of the top on the fabric.  I also drew in the lines made by creases and wrinkles in the top. My next step was painting the shadows on the top using ink and aloe vera gel. This is what it looked like when I was finished:

painted top

I used blue for my shadows because it coordinated well with the blue jeans and sunglasses. 

The top fabric was a bit see through and I did not want to be able to see the background fabric through it, so I lined it with a tan solid cotton fabric. It worked as a perfect lining for this fabric.

My next post will be about the blue jeans. Thanks for visiting my blog!

 

Thread Painting

In this post I'm going to describe the thread painting technique that I used in the Pam Holland workshop.  The rooster in the art quilt above has been thread painted using this method. 

As previously described, we started with white fabric with a line drawing of our image on the fabric. The white fabric was spritzed with water and then ink was dropped on the damp fabric. The color of ink we dropped matched the color on the image you wanted to create. The inks bled into each other and that was fine. The goal was to create a guide for stitching so you knew what color to stitch where. 

ink painted fabric rooster and pin basted top

After the inks dried the fabric was pressed and fusible was ironed on the back. The image was cut out and fused to your pieced background. The top was then sandwiched with batting and the fabric back that you selected and pin basted. That is the first step in the thread painting process. The next step is the stitching.

The stitching is done using a domestic sewing machine. A zigzag stitch is the primary stitch used. Once in a while you use a straight stitch but most of the stitching is done with a zigzag stitch. I used a darning foot on the machine with my feed dogs down. I started the stitching by selecting one color of thread and zigzag stitching in that area. Then I changed thread color and moved to the adjacent area.

In each area I tried to thoroughly stitch to cover as much of the background fabric as possible.  I overlapped the stitching into adjacent areas for blending. Sometimes I used more than one shade of a color in an area to add depth. 

Here are some detail shots that show the stitching:

I continued on in this manner until the entire rooster was covered. I was very happy with the way it looked when it was done.  I thought it gave a more three dimensional appearance to the subject. 

I intend to use this process again on another quilt.  It is ideal for texture I think!       

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Urban Graffiti - "The Krew"

This post is about my Urban Graffiti art quilt.  I've decided to call it "The Krew". I understand that "krew" is the name and spelling that taggers use. So that's what I'm calling it.

My last post was about painting the clothes. Today I'm going to talk about painting the wall, graffiti and ground surface.

For the graffiti I used an orange Jacquard textile paint.

 I put it on in a way to make the strokes visible and going in different directions, or to leave bits of white fabric showing through.

The three dimensional part of the letters was painted dark blue. I used inks for that area.

 I outlined the letters with black or dark blue pens and paint.


The ground surface was painted in the same ochre that I used for the clothes.  I mixed some white with the ochre to give lighter value areas. Likewise I added shading around the shoes for depth.

After the lettering was done I painted the wall behind it. I selected a gray color. The gray paint I used was an ink. I mixed it with aloe-vera gel and white opaque Setacolor paint to lighten the value of it.  Here is the wall color:

I left some of the white showing through to give a mottled appearance.

You can see the overall look in these last two photos. Now its on to the quilting stage!

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Hibiscus - Postcard Quilt



Hisbiscus

 This is my postcard quilt for my Serendipity Exchange. The theme this time is "Flower". I painted a hibiscus from a photo I took while on a cruise in the South Pacific a few years ago. I used Tsukineko ink paints. I practiced some new leaf machine quilting patterns I recently learned from Cynthia Catlin in the background. For the border I couched some yarn around the edge. This is being sent to Linda Friedman as we speak. I hope she likes it.