Flight Feathers #1 - Mounted Fiber Art

Flight Feathers #1 - 8"x8" - Mounted Art Quilt

Recently I completed a 40" x 40" work that featured a crow on a telephone wire.*  The theme had emotional significance for me because the call of crow on a wire was in the background as my father and I hugged and said for the last time, "I love you", before an accident took his life the next day.  Every time I see or hear a crow, I am reminded of my father and that he loved me very much.

Because many of my works have implicit undertones, I wanted to have a white feather in the bird's beak that would, to me, signify my father leaving this plane of existence.  This led to my experimenting with thread to create the perfect feather.  Unfortunately, white was "lost" on a silver lame field.  Still, I liked the feathers and knew that if I put them away for future use, they would surely become one with a growing drawer of "someday to use" items.

Thus, I set about making a sandwich of black fabric and batting and free motion quilted a background for the thread feathers.  I then stitched the leaves onto the mini quilt.  In my stash was an 8"x8" stretched canvas.  It was perfect for mounting this mini art quilt.

Close-up of First Feather

Close-up of Second Feather

Close-up of Third Feather

Once the quilt was mounted to the stretched canvas, I used a stenciling brush to lightly apply acrylic paint mixed with fabric medium to the four corners.

Last I backed the work with black mat board and attached D-rings to make the piece ready for hanging.

Back of Mounted Mini Quilt

*Once the large, 40"x40" quilt begins to travel, I will provide a picture and write-up of that, but I will post a "teaser" here.  The crow is constructed with dark blue and black satin and is heavily thread painted on the head and the breast.

Beginning of the Crow

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

© Linda Friedman 2016.  All rights reserved

Make Stencils from Hot Laminated Film

McGyvering Laminated Film into Stencils

Example 

Yesterday I needed to make laminated tags for a sewing machine that was going in for repair.  Didn't want to take a chance that any part would fall into a black hole of other machines.  As a result I had several pieces of laminated film left over after I cut out the tags.

What, oh, what could be done with these?  I hate throwing away anything that may serve another purpose.  After a couple of hours, the thought hit me that since the left over pieces were very firm, impermeable to water and also transparent, they might be able to be used to make stencils.

Tools and Materials Used:
- White paper
- Laminated film
- Craft knife
- Freezer paper
- Water
- Paper towel
- Fabric
- Iron

My first attempt at cutting a stencil from the film was to freehand cut a vine form.  The picture below is of that stencil.  Because of the glass like transparency and light reflection, I placed the stencil(s) on a black background, so they appear quite dark but at least they are visible.

Vine Stencil

Since the vine cutting was successful, and because I had a couple of larger lamination scraps, I drew a picture of a sun shape on white paper, placed it under a laminated piece, taped it to the paper, and started cutting the stencil.

Laying Laminated Sheet Atop Paper Pattern

Cut Out of Stencil and Paper Pattern

Because the edges of the stencil are almost invisible upon fabric, placement became difficult.  To overcome this difficulty, I put painter's tape around all front and back outside edges of the stencil.

Painter's Tape Put on All Outside Edges

In order to be able to know where the cut out began and ended, I placed a couple of small pieces of tape onto the stencil.

Final Stencil Ready for Painting

The colors I chose to apply with stencil brushes were orange and red.

Palette Colors

I started stenciling directly onto the fabric; however, when the fabric became wet with paint, it tended to distort.  After the first sun shape print, I ironed freezer paper to the back of the fabric to provide stability to the fabric.

Freezer Paper Ironed to Back of Fabric

The width of the freezer paper was wider than the fabric and tended to make the whole unit roll up.  A simple solution was to cut away excess freezer paper.

Excess Freezer Paper  Cut Away from Fabric

In order to keep the sun shaped prints aligned, I placed a ruler onto the fabric as a printing guide.

Ruler as Guide

Aligned Printing

Clean-up was a breeze with laminated film cut stencils.  I merely sprayed plain water onto the stencil and then used a paper towel to wipe off the paint.

Stencil Cleaned with Water and Paper Towel

 Finished Stenciled Fabric with Stencils Used

The "experiment" proved to be so successful that I am sure that I will be cutting more stencils from laminated film in the future.  Their ease of use and clean-up and their permanency will surely be a go-to stenciling method for me in the future.  I'm so certain of this that I have edged 3 additional left over pieces of laminated film with painter's tape.  They are ready to go when the muse visits again.

Laminated Film Prepared for Stencil Cutting

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

© Linda Friedman 2016.  All rights reserved

Block Printing with Foam #5

Adding Salt for Texture

(For those who are just now joining in you can follow along from the beginning by linking to:  Step #1, Step #2, and Step #3  and Step 4.)

While the fabric was still saturated with layers of Setacolor fabric paint washes, I took out my improvised shaker of kosher salt that had been a taco sauce bottle.

Converted Taco Sauce Bottle

To make the bottle into a shaker I used an awl to punch holes in the lid.

Bottle Cap Top with Punched Holes

I then sprinkled salt all over the wet fabric.

Shaking Salt onto Wet Paint Washes

I usually do this step with the fabric in sunlight, but it was night and I wanted to see if the salt would draw up color without the benefit of the sunlight magic.  It worked, although not as dramatically as if the sun had been on it.  For the purpose of this work, the result was fine.  Yay!  Hard "edges" of color were softened and visual texture was created.

Close-up:  Result of Adding Salt to Paint Washings

Tomorrow I will post about a couple of images that I want to applique to this block printed,  painted background fabric.
Note:  These posts are my participation in the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge.  If you, too, would like to participate, link to Cheryl Sleboda's:  http://muppin.com/…/inde…/the-31-day-blog-writing-challenge/

Until tomorrow...

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

© Linda Friedman 2015.  All rights reserved

Deep Sea Ballet in Fiber - Scene One

Several years ago I started a 40+" x 40"+ whole cloth quilt that was a lot of fun creating.  Somehow other projects including shows and exhibits intervened and it was set aside and became one of those UFO's (unfinished objects) that I promised to get back to one day.

This has been the week to set about finishing the work.  Because it may be in a very large exhibit for the entire month of August, 2015, I am only going to show elements of it until the exhibit is past.

I first designed and hand cut a freezer paper stencil of two kelp images. each with two branches and then painted the images onto the commercial background fabric with fabric paint.

You may be able to see that I inserted cording between the top and the batting and then stitched on either side of the cording.  This is just one small area of the quilt.

At the time I was originally working on this, I was also exploring needle punching with a battery operated needle punch machine that I purchased from Keeling's Krafts and created three fairly large needle punch fish onto the quilt top.  This was done before the quilt top was added to batting and a backing.  Here is one of the fish images.

To add another type of kelp flora, I cut strips of an old stretchy type garment and then slashed it up and down the strip length.  This element rises from what will be the sea floor.  It is only stitched along the middle of the strip from top to bottom.  The edges are left free to create a feeling of movement.

I'm actually becoming quite excited about the way that this work is developing and it's all I can do to hold back sharing the entire piece. The next post will show another element though.

Should you happen to be in the Orange County area in California during the month of August, you might enjoy visiting the Mission Viejo Library where this work will be exhibited and where each of us in the Beyond the Edge Fiber Artists group will have a full 11'x8' of wall space for our works.  There are 10 of us in the group so it promises to be a spectacular exhibit.

I'll be BAAAAAAAAACK...

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

© Linda Friedman 2015.  All rights reserved

Jewelry Dress Form

I couldn't put the dress form idea to sleep last night so took a scrap of fabric, traced the pattern from the screen print project onto the fabric and turned it into a jewelry dress form. The original fabric fell somewhere between eggshell and beige. The form looked just fine as it was, but when I painted the stand, I had to try out Generation Green Shimmer Opaque Gel Medium Sapphire* to see if it painted nicely on fabric. Ah ha! It did. It stiffened the fabric a bit and that is just fine for this project. The lace necklace and waist detailing was made on the sewing machine. I merely stitched circles and odd shapes on the stabilizer, rinsed out the stabilizer, and stitched these lacy pieces onto the form.



* Generation Green Gel Mediums may be ordered on-line through keelingskrafts.com. If you ever order anything through Keelings Krafts, you will be delighted. Barb and Doug Keeling are great to work with.

Masking the Embroidery Hooped Screen with House Paint

(Note: To see instructions for making this hooped screen and for preparing a design, see my posts on May 26 and May 27, 2010)

The embroidery hooped screen is now ready for masking. there are a variety of media that can be used, but for this example old, thick, latex house paint will be used. Once the paint is completely dry, the screen may be used over and over again because water cleanup does not destroy the mask. If generous margins had been left around the edge, this screen could, theoretically, be removed from the hoop, thus allowing the hoop to be used for another project. Later this screen could be placed, again, into the hoop and reused. Without generous margins of fabric, reinsertion will probably not be possible.

MATERIALS:

Hooped silk screen frame
1" and 1/4" stiff bristled artist brushes
Latex exterior house paint
Water for washing brushes
Container for water
Paper towels

1) Screen is prepared for masking. This image is of the side on which printing will ultimately be done.

Turn the hoop over and apply the mask to the reverse side.



2) The masking medium for this screen is old, latex house paint. It forms a thick mask, washes up with soap and water and becomes virtually permanent when dry.
3) Fill a container to the 1/2 level with water. This will be used to immediately clean brushes between uses. If the brushes are not cleaned quickly after each use, the latex house paint dries very fast and will harden the brushes and make them useless.
4) The 1" brush is used to fill the large blank areas around the drawn image. Smaller brushes are used to apply the mask to delineate details and to fill in the spaces next to the drawn lines of the image. This pictures shows that the large brush applied the mask to within approximately 1/4" of the drawn line of the image (left) and a small brush applied the mask UP TO the drawn line (right).
5) Fill in all the spaces where no screen printing ink will be applied. Carefully fill in masking details with small brush. Note the open areas around the arrow forms.
Closeup of areas that need to be filled in with a small brush.
7) When masking approaches completion, hold the hooped screen up to a bright light and look for pinholes of light coming through the masked areas. If any light shines through a masked area, add more masking medium. If this is not done, screen printing ink will come through that area and print on the fabric.
8) The previous picture shows the hooped screen being held up to a fluorescent light source and it did not offer consistent lighting. The hooped unit needed to be laid over a light box to assure that no further pinholes were evident. See two circular light holes on the right side of this example.
9) After fully masking the screen, set the hooped unit aside to thoroughly dry. Since old latex house paint can be very thick, let the piece dry in an area where air circulates for at least 12 hours. Once the masking medium is bone dry, the screen is ready for application of silk screen ink or fabric paint.

The next, and most fun, step is to use screen printing ink or fabric paint to put the image onto fabric. The next posting will have pictures and descriptions of that process.

Moroccan Surface Design (continued)

http://www.SAQA.com

I just couldn't leave the basic design alone. I cut another 6' vinyl stencil to suggest scroll work and applied yellow acrylic paint to which I added fabric medium. Although the yellow paint was the same as that which is in the diamonds, it was not applied as thickly and, therefore, lets more of the dyed red fabric show through and, thus, produces a somewhat pink color. Something tells me that this will not be the end of this surface design project.