Wow, laundry???

 I've been doing laundry and it hasn't been socks!  lol   No time for small stuff.  I'm thinking big!

 I need some fabric for block backgrounds.  So I sprayed away.  I might better have actually got out the dye apparatus but I was too far gone to stop and refocus.  ;)  This is the front which is more vibrant.

This is the back or underside of my spraying.  I was thinking that this might be too light and bright for what I have in mind.  The fabric is white feather ticking, a tight weave 100 % cotton  and cheap considering it is a good 100 inches wide.  I split it down the middle and it is still a bit wider than my table. In attempting to get all the fabric I started scootching it up.  aha!  I could get hills and valleys and maybe the colour would migrate around!  So I hung up the first piece to dry and found the rest of the fabric and started a second piece.

I wanted it a bit more muted and with some yellow greens.  I was a bit like a mad scientist.  I did try for hills and valleys. The movement was not quite what I hoped but still okay.

It has some blotchy areas as I tried different spray bottle nozzles.  Some were not sprays but spits!  :O  But I resisted doing more as I can fine tune later if necessary.

But I am sure to find the backgrounds I need in these two pieces so I can begin to think about the blocks themselves.  I want them to be about the size of my gelli plate.

 I need to make bigger/fuller leaf stencils and masks than I had used on my first attempt at making my own fabric.

 Then I remembered the Ikea fabric I bought for backing a lap quilt that also needed to be prewashed.

I now have some great inspiration for leaves.  These leaves are very close to my ideal!  It is coming together!!!

The rest of the week is gonna see housework, weeding and babysitting.  vbsigh  But I do hope to make some progress on getting my stencils and some more stamps made.  So I shall 'leaf you'  with a full laundry basket of fabric and a promise to turn over some new leaves next week.

I do believe I finally have something along the fabric line to show for The Needle and Thread Network.  I wonder what is in their laundry baskets?

Can this trash be saved?

These Journal quilts are full of surprises! My theme was garbage, anything we'd be throwing away. I had scraps left from a quilt project. I had a flimsy piece of white fabric. I had some phone books to throw away. I have been seeing lots of projects with selvages lately. I'm not sure I'm for saving all my selvages but I can come up with a few rather than throw them away. I have some paints that need to be used before I feel like I really did just throw my money away.

So, here is the process and reclamation from the garbage.

I used a gel medium to glue down bits of paper from the yellow pages of the phone book. I chose the sewer section which had a lot of non fabric advertisements. lol

I learned in my research that the first colours should be the opposite of your final plan. I tried to use a light hand over the papers even though it is a transparent paint. My 'oh' was kinda hesitant. :0 I also want to add a strip of green mulberry paper to separate my fabric strip.

I'm getting ready to add the finishing colour.

I'm sorry I was so dismayed at the arrival of 'midnight' I forgot to take a photo. But this is also where I got really nervous as things were getting out of hand. The Setacolours were ordered after a class I took a number of years ago. With basic colours you can mix everything you need. Uhm, works in theory but I am thinking I'd rather have smaller bottles and lots of options. yikes! Where is the garbage?

Thank goodness I got some Shimmer Pearl. (I shoulda got white as well.) So I covered a whole lot over and slapped another piece of of the yellow pages on top. Trust me, this was my trying to redeem my mess and it looked quite bad. So I shimmered a whole lot more!

well, that worked and I was off again. I'm wanting yellow and blue. I was so intent on not making garbage I forgot photos and focused on process.

I'm not unhappy but it certainly wasn't quite what I had in mind. Except for the heavy breathing and the heart palpitations, it is kinda fun and as my learning curve flattens out I'm sure it will totally be fun!

So here is my garbage!

This is probably a truer representation than the mellow photo I posted at the beginning.But I'll be posting the mellow version to the 3CS Journal Quilts flicker group!

Technique of the Month

This month the TOM was to paint some fabric with metallic paints. Could be for the purpose of disguising ugly fabric or enhancing any fabric.

A few years ago I took two different dye classes. One was actually dyeing fabric while the other was painting fabric. Now darned if I remember which ones I have here but the first was kinda ugly to me so I wet it and then applied a metallic paint with a bit of fabric medium. I used a foam roller with sections missing. The folds leave gaps and I should have repositioned and added another metallic. This was a fat quarter of white muslin originally.

Then the second piece seemed pretty good to me so I found a stencil to which I applied the metallic paint. Again, a fat quarter.

Aha, this is how you get those layered effects!

Now this is what I learned.

1) I should get more foam rollers as that would have been better to roll in the paint and then on the stencil. Less would have gotten down in the grooves and the stencil would have been clearer when pressed onto the fabric.

2) The bigger the stencil the less mess.

3) Anything with fabric needs to be done in the basement. The mixed media counter area is too small and I am sure glad my sewing table came clean. yikes!

4) This is a lot of fun. I had a bit of a time crunch and lots is happening here in the coop. I will definitely be designating some long summer days to DYE for!