Monday, February 26, 2007

Experimenting

In my previous post, I showed you a piece I worked on with meltable fabrics. I forgot to mention that after I had free motion stitched the piece I then applied heat with my heat gun and melted away some of the layers.

Anyway...I wasn't too happy with it. So I cut it into four pieces and did stuff. I was feeling a little bit wreckless. I actually thought of Lynda (Hi Lynda!) while doing this. She is always doing some really interesting things and I tried to think like she would while approaching ways to alter this piece.

In this first photo, I used a glue/water mixture and brushed quite a bit over the layered piece. I then took two sheets of scrunched up, then reflattened tissue paper and spread it over. I added more glue/water. Then I added about three colors of Dye-na-flow and spread that around. Left it to dry. Once it was dry you couldn't see any of the original piece, but I got these cool textury areas on the tissue. It almost looks like some embroidered stitches. The tissue ended up coming off the original piece quite easily. I think the glue soaked into the lower layers too much and didn't adhere well to the tissue. But I can still experiment further with the layered piece. And I have a cool tissue sample to do something with.


For the next sample...I used about 4 colors of textile paints and put it here and there until most of the original fabric color was gone. I like how this turned out because I like this color much better and you can still see all the textures from the stitching and layering underneath.


The last sample I did was to use regular craft type acrylics and painted a piece of wonder under (fusible web). Let it dry. Then fused it to the layered piece. I don't like how this turned out at all. You cannot see any of the original piece through the wonder under layer. Perhaps I used the wrong type of paint for this technique. Any suggestions?


So there you have it. Since February's technique challenge in the Fiber Art Friends groups was to explore texture, I think I can include this.

Here is a felted pouch update: Five are lined and zippered. Five left!


Vicki asked in the comments from the last post, what am I going to do with all those pouches? Well, I think it's looking like I have a really good start on next year's Christmas gifts. Also, I'm just having so much fun knitting them.

Micki asked if I add the embellishments to the pouches before or after washing/felting. The embellishments are novelty yarns that are knitted right into the pouch...so they are added before.