Cow quilt

Earlier this year, I decided to make a cow quilt. Not a quilt with a cow on it, an art quilt shaped like a cow. 

Meet George. She is roughly 5'6" high and 6'6" wide.

George is raw edge pieced, with fused and stitched circles.

She is mainly recycled fabrics. Her rump is a curtain, you can see the metal grommets for the curtain rod. It was a patterned white-on-white fabric, but I painted the diamond shapes with acrylic paint. In order to get the paints to blend, without bleeding into the unpainted sections, I mixed my acrylic paint with clear aloe vera gel.  Below is a picture of what would happen if I had used water instead. The aloe vera worked very well. I did not add anything else to the acrylic paint as it is an art quilt and cannot be machine washed. I did iron the painted sections to help "set" the paint, with a teflon sheet between my iron and the fabric. It did "smoke" a bit and smelled a bit funny, so I turned down the heat a bit to medium high. I do not think this was toxic, but don't take my word on it. I should have put on my respirator.

This fabric (below) was a purchased solid white twill. I stamped the fabric using a washer. You can see the post about stamping this fabric here.

The top white section is a white cotton tablecloth. The colored belly section is a puddle painted piece of polyester sheer curtain.  My blogs on puddle painting can be seen here and here (not the same fabric, just the technique).

The fabric that looks like small dots (shown below in the middle and used for some of the legs) is a textured curtain. It was white and I lightly rubbed Shiva paintsticks over it, which only painted the raised parts on the fabric. After letting the fabric sit for a few days, I ironed it to set the colors.

I did have a full size paper "pattern" of the overall cow, but just used that to figure out my piecing.

 

Once all the pieces were sewn together, I pinned it to some batting and free motion stitched it, outline stitching the patterns on the fabrics.

I came into textile arts from a mixed media background. I will be the first to say that I will not pass any tests regarding having a beautiful back side on my quilt.  I did not want to have a binding around the outside edge, and did not want to have to turn down the curved edge of the fabric on the back side, so I used the "pillowcase method" which involves laying the backer fabric face to face with the quilt top, sewing all around but leaving an opening in one section, in order to turn it right-side out. Before turning it, I did add some iron-on stiff interfacing at her head and rump so she would not sag when she was hung.  I then turned the quilt right-side out and sewed 1/4" from the outside edge, all around the quilt. This is really too big a quilt to use the pillowcase method, and there are some wrinkles and folds in the backing fabric.  But she is a beauty on the front side!

Sunprinting on fabric

I finally made time to do some sun printing last weekend. I wanted to do some large pieces of fabric, which was a challenge. I also wanted to do multiple layers of paint to get some depth to the patterns.

Here is my setup. I lay my fabric out on an insulation board (from the hardware store). My board is about 4' long x 3' wide. My fabric is 6' long x 3-1/2' wide. For the first layer I did half the fabric and after it was painted and dried, I did the other half.

I find it easier to lay dry fabric on the board and wet it with a spray bottle, than to dampen the fabric first. I need to try to get the fabric as smooth as possible and it is much easier doing it section by section with a spray bottle. The fabric was pre-washed and dried in the dryer.  I am using 100% cotton sheet.

Here are my Setacolor paints. I keep them in these plastic containers with screw-top lids. I water them down about 50/50 (half paint/half water), screw the lid on and shake it. Make sure the lid is on tight.

Here is a collection of lace, doilies, stencils, etc to sun print with.

For this piece I layered two pieces of fabric. The bottom layer usually is more muted than the top, after they have been painted and dried. I often do this as it's like getting two pieces for the work of one.

For this first layer, I used two yellows and an orange. I used lace and lace doilies to sun print. They were very soft sun prints, due to the light paint colors.

This is after doing both sections of fabric, size is roughly 6' x 3-1/2'.

Here is a close-up of a doily print.

For the second layer, I painted on red, more orange, and fuchsia. I used stencils and plastic doilies with this layer.

I wanted to soften up the color transitions, so for the third layer, I did what I call Puddle Painting. I pour multiple paint colors onto a plastic lid (from a storage container) and smush my wrinkled up damp fabric into the paint. I will squeeze the fabric a little, unwrinkle it, then ball it up again and smush it into the paint again. I usually only have to do this twice to get good coverage on most of the fabric. I don't want to completely cover up the previous layer. I recommend wearing gloves. I puddle painted the entire fabric and had it span two different boards (since the fabric is longer than the boards). You can see my blog post demonstrating puddle painting here.

Here is the final piece, ironed. I think it's hard to tell how big the fabric is in these pictures. The round stencils are about 12" to give you a sense of scale.

Close up of the final piece.

As I said above, I put a second piece of fabric underneath when I painted the first layer. The colors were a muted yellow and orange on this bottom piece. I just added one more layer of paint to it, to create a more multi-colored piece. I used the puddle painting technique and used primary colors, cobalt blue, red, and yellow. I also included some fuchsia and some opaque turquoise. Setacolor opaque colors will not sun print, but I like this turquoise color and it adds some pop.

Here is the final piece and I think it is delicious.

Here are some close-ups.

I also like the back side, the colors and patterns are more subtle.

Back, close-up.

I think I will be combining some of the front and some of the back in my project.



But I'm not done sun printing.

I did a similar orange and yellow first layer on a smaller piece of fabric. This piece is about 2' x 3'. I layered a lot of smaller stencils on this piece.

I also did a narrow band of fabric that I put lace on top of.

Both these have a top and bottom layer of fabric.

Here is the top layer, after sun printing. I left this piece as is and did not print over it.

Here is the bottom layer.

The bottom layer I printed over using ultramarine blue and more stencils. I do not like the orange and dark blue contrast.  I am not sure what I will do with this piece. Maybe another layer?The area to the right where it was folded up it actually quite interesting.

For the narrow band, I cut it in half and overprinted one of them with red and fuchsia, with stencils.

Close-up. The dark yellow section does have the lace pattern printed on it, it is just hard to see in these pictures. As you can see, the section I over-painted with red and fuschia is quite different depending on the color of the underlayer. The part that looks orange was the darker yellow color like the piece above it.

Here is the lace and doilies I sun printed with. I did paint them some more after printing.

I also painted some cheesecloth, a Japanese inspired 60's fabric, and polyester dress lining. There is a certain kind of polyester that prints the wrinkles in the fabric really well.

More cheesecloth and the Japanese inspired 60's fabric.

I started the large fabric pieces, which were cotton sheets, with the sewn edges still on. They were preventing the fabric from being really flat on the boards, so I cut them off after applying the paint. I will be keeping them to incorporate in my project.

But wait, there's more. When I have my sun printing supplies out, I start looking for things to paint. I made some large fabric collage pieces previously, and decided to sun print a few. These were puddle painted. This is a big one, roughly 3' x3'.  I used a few stencils on it as well (circles and plastic doilies).

Before:

 After:

This one is 12" x 12". I dripped a little opaque turquoise on afterwards. Puddle painted with no sun printing.

This one is 12" x12". I think I may work on leaving more white on future pieces. Puddle painted with no sun printing.

And I just thought I'd add a few pictures of flowers from my yard. The back yard is more weeds than grass, but I do have these lovelies.

Northern Hibiscus

Surprise lily

Fabric tree collages

A while ago I had made a layered piece with gelli printed interfacing as a top layer, which I then melted portions away.  You can see that post here.

I thought I would try this with a tree image I have been working on, and use free-motion stitching instead of hand embroidery. Here you can see the different components. I have a painted canvas for the background. The leaf canopy and tree were fabrics I painted in a Jason Pollen workshop a few weeks ago. The interfacing layer is a gelli print I made a while ago. I used fusible web to iron down the yellow tree canopy fabric. I won't iron down the tree trunk until I have finished with the interfacing layer. 

When I put the interfacing over the yellow fabric, I am pretty sad that my painted fabric is pretty much hidden. Next time I would probably just grab a fabric from my stash and not use something I hand painted.  I then took this "sandwich" to my sewing machine and free-motion stitched on it.

What I learned as I went along:

1. The interfacing melts a lot better if the free-motion stitching is fairly open. Tight stitching really prevents it from melting.
2. If I cut slits in the interfacing where I want it to melt away, it does help. I just used a seam ripper. I wanted to make sure it melted where I have sky openings in the tree canopy.
3. Sew right along the outside edge if you don't want the background fabric visible around all the edges. 
4. Use lightweight interfacing. The heavy stuff does not like to melt and is some places the edges looked light brown/slightly toasted. 

Remember to always work in a well-ventilated area and wear a mask to block any fumes.

As you can see I played tree trunk swap and decided to use this magenta/purple one instead of the red one shown in the previous picture, since the gelli-printed interfacing had a touch of purple.

And here are a bunch more. This one has the heavy interfacing.

I did free-motion stitch around the trees and branches after I ironed the tree trucks down.  I really like the following two where I used colorful thread for this, instead of dark gray.

This one was the first one I stitched the interfacing on. I did the stitching very close together, so the interfacing did not melt much.

I love how they turned out, although there were a lot of steps and work involved.  I did use my Scan'n'cut to cut the tree canopies, but hand cut the tree trunks. These are roughly 8" x 10". I think I will work on a larger one next!

Layered and painted fabric landscapes

It has been a while since I have posted. I have been working on art pieces since my last post, but I feel like I have been spinning my wheels.

I had been thinking of just posting finished work on the blog, but then my posts would definitely be less frequent, so I shelved that idea.

A while ago, I created some patchwork backgrounds that I planned to paint, see here for the original post.  My original thought was to have a dripped paint effect, but decided to do some abstract landscapes on some of them.

For my first paint layer on two different pieces, I used watered down acrylic paints. When these dried, they dried much lighter and I decided they needed another paint layer. I switched to Setacolor paints because I know how they behave on fabrics and I could get the colors I was looking for.

 Here is the final piece. I plan to add some stitching and some additional fiber layers to this.

Another piece started with acrylic paints. This is when it was still wet.

I did add another coat of Setacolor blue for the sky.  I like how the brown migrated in that one strip of fabric above the horizon, as it looks like trees. I plan to add some opaque paints to add a bit more realism.

And the third one. I love how the diagonal piped fabric at the bottom gives the look of a farm field.

All of these need more work and details, but they are looking good so far.

I did try dripping paint on another piece, but it looks horrendous. I also worked a bit on the last two patched backgrounds, but I was experimenting and they are pretty awful. I won't be showing them on the blog until they make a turn for the better.