Try It Out Thursday : When Evolon Met Bondaweb (Pt 2)

Okay, so far so good, we have a piece of bondawebbed Evolon, making a lovely background.  But for what?

Well... as you know, Bondaweb is simply glue in a sheet.  So, by definition, we could add pieces of cloth or paper (or whatever) and fuse them onto the Evolon.  But I thought that it would be more interesting to add some foiling...there's nothing like a bit of glitz... so I cut a spiral shape, and some thin tendrils, from blue foil, and fused them on, having carefully covered the piece with greaseproof paper first.  But it seemed too shiny, so I then added a little more bondaweb, and fused again.  That produced this;

Which I rather like.  Particularly the texture on top of the foiling.  It looks super complicated...but in fact, was super easy.  Why not try it out?

Try It Out Thursday : More Mixed Media

I thought I'd show you a different way of using lutradur in an altered book; this time, I'm using it to frame an existing image, a postcard I'd made using acrylic wax as a resist, and brusho sprays.   I added the image to the book in the right place, and stuck it down using double sided tape.  I decided to use the same method to stick the lutradur down, as you can see from the picture below of the tape before its backing paper was removed.  As you can see, I added it on three sides, but with hindsight, I should have added it at the top, too, and advise you to do so if you try this (and .  It is, of course, transparent; you won't be able to see it through the lutradur.

Then, I cut a sheet of Lutradur 70 to fit the page, and stuck it down using the double sided tape.  I decided that this would be a 'frame', so I then burned out the centre of the lutradur.  I knew that the glue would slow down the burning, so I could start from the centre, and work out the way; when I got to the point of the glue, I would be able to stop there.  Of course, that only works if you put glue on all four sides, right?  I ended up burning through the lutradur at the top left of the image.  To rectify it, I took a section of the burned out lutradur and covered up the gap... so you can see why I'm advising you do what I say, not exactly what I did!  Of course, the other option would be to treat the lutradur like mount board, and cut out a viewing rectangle slightly smaller than the size of the image, and stick it on in the same way.  That would give you nice clean lines around the edges.

Now for some colour on the 'frame', though it could have been left white.  I did consider silver, but didn't think the image looked particularly wintry, so  I started by painting the lutradur with light gold acrylic paint. 
When that dryed, I rubbed some teal blue Markal stick over it in some places.  I then decided to add some traces of dark brown, just to give a stronger contrast between the image and the edges; this time, though, I added the Markal stick to a piece of scrap lutradur and dabbed it on.  Don't scrub at the lutradur; if you do, you are likely to make the surface fuzzy.  Of course, if that's what you're aiming for, be my guest!

So, the final touch was to run a black watercolour crayon round the edges of the page, just to help give a little definition to it.  And there we are, another completed page in my altered book!

Try It Out Thursday : Mixed Media

We tend to think of spunbonded fabrics in terms of textile art, but of course they have much wider art applications than that.  It has become increasingly popular for textiles to move across into mixed media, blurring the boundaries between the two.  I've been working in mixed media for many years now, and use spunbonded fabrics in a variety of ways to get some very interesting results.

I'm particularly interested in altered books...no, don't shudder!  There is of course an argument that books are sacrosanct, and should never be harmed in any way...but nonetheless, books are pulped or otherwise destroyed every day (apparently you can have too much of a good thing).  The books I alter are books that are being sold off for next to nothing, books that are old, or falling apart or for some reason unwanted and unloved by anyone.  They make a wonderful three dimensional 'canvas' for art works.  I thought we'd have a look at using Lutradur 30 in an altered book.

There is lots of information on the web about how to alter a book;  if you have never tried this branch of art before, you might find this link helpful.  Or just Google 'how to make an altered book' to get lots of instruction!  You join me here part way through altering this book.  I have done most of the preparation, and now I'm making art in the pages.  This page here has been painted with acrylic paint; I want to add a leaf to it (no pun intended..).  So, I begin by spreading mod podge over the painted page.  I'm using Mod Podge here because it was the first glue that came to hand;  PVA is fine, acrylic mediums, book paste is all fine. Don't get hung up about adhesives...if you're stuck, fusible would do just as well.  We don't associate ironing with books, but there's a first time for everything!

After spreading the adhesive evenly across the page, I added a large, brown skeleton leaf.

I then added more adhesive to cover the leaf.  Make sure there is an even covering; this will both give some added protection to the leaf and hold the lutradur in place.

Finally, I cut a piece of Lutradur 30 to the size of the page, and stuck it down.  So far so good. 

I now want to think about colouring the lutradur...but we'll talk about that on Tuesday.  Of course, the techniques I'm using here could be applied to either good quality paper (watercolour paper is ideal) or to board, as well as to books. 

Try It Out Thursday : Lutradur Rose

One of the things about lutradur, and other spunbonded fabrics, is that they don't have a bias edge, as they are not woven.  You use the bias edge in wovens to make shaped things like silk flowers, because it is stretchy.  That made me wonder about whether I could use lutradur to make flowers with.  So... I took a piece of florists wrap, which had little pieces of glitz on it, and coloured it lilac using transfer dyes.  I then cut a strip roughly 4" wide, and folded one short edge in on itself, and fused it down (see below).  You could do this with both edges, but it's not really necessary.

I then folded the whole strip in half across the width, and stitched along the bottom, using a doubled thread.  As you can see from the image, the stitches are fairly regular, but not the same; this gives a more random look to the finished flower. It does help if they're in a straight line, but as usual, I'm incapable of keeping anything straight <g>.

You can gather up the cloth as you go, or leave it until all the stitching is done, it doesn't really matter, but make sure you gather it all up as you want it before you finish stitching, using a double back stitch to secure it.  Incidentally, I've used dark blue thread here so that you can see what's going on; you would normally use thread that matches the cloth, so that it can't be seen.

Now, start with the end which you fused down, and roll it up tightly to create the centre of the flower.

Keep rolling, to make a flower head.

To finish it off, wrap the bottom end of the flower with thread, or take a few stitches through it.  If you want to give your rose a stem, then use florists wire to do this, and then tape it with green florists tape.  I'm using mine on a hat, so I'm not wiring it.

To finish it off, you can stitch the other end down using small stitches; I'm going to have mine lying on its side, so you won't see the unfinished end.  Note that lutradur doesn't fray, so you don't need to worry about it coming apart.  And there's my finished flower!

Try It Out Thursday : Making Embellishments

This is a quick and easy follow up to Tuesday's post.  I said I wanted to do something with the third flower I had cut out; so I made a freestanding flower with a little bit of glitz.  I took some angelina fibres and ironed them together to make 'cloth', and put that on top of a piece of heavyweight Lutradur.  I didn't have any XL to hand, so used Lutradur 100, it was fine.  I then put the last of the flowers on top of the angelina, making a three layered sandwich.  Then, covering it with greaseproof paper, I ironed all three layers together.  The layer of fusible already on the flower was enough to hold all three layers together, as the angelina is very fine.  If you wish, you could add stitch round the edges as we did with the bag.  I'm intending to punch a hole through one of the petals, to hang it on a piece of ribbon, which I will tie round the handles of the bag.  Try it out with a bit of scrap; you can make embellishments for mobile phones, key fobs, anything you like, using this incredibly simple technique.

Have fun!

Try It Out Thursday : Keeping It Simple.

It is possible to buy spunbonded materials which are similar to lutradur in construction; one type of such material is known, here at least, as florists wrap.  It comes in a wide variety of colours, and may even be patterned; I have on which has the names of European capital cities in black on a white background, ideal for journalling. The temptation is to use them as they come, but remember you can always add to them using transfer paints or other media.  The image above shows a piece of orange florists wrap which I have printed some flowers onto in red.  I think it's really effective; it's simple, but striking.  It would be better, of course, if I had remembered that florists wrap is not as heat resistant as lutradur... the pattern was not transferring, so I turned up the heat a bit...only to melt the fabric onto the paper in one place.  Oops...

To try this, just take a piece of typing paper, and doodle flower shapes all over it with transfer paint or transfer crayons.  Leave it to dry, then iron it onto your florists wrap, or onto lutradur.  It would be fun to put something underneath it, but I have designs on those little flowers... which we'll look at next week.

Try It Out Thursday : Using Lutradur Lace

Okay, it's my birthday today, and I'm cheating slightly... I thought I would give you some eye candy.  I showed you how to make lutradur lace here; now I'm showing you what I did with that little piece of lace.  As you can see, it's attached to a fascinator base, and I've added some feathers and a sequinned motif.  I think it's fun!  The base is black, which I thought made it slightly more sophisticated than either red or white.  I think this one is finished, but you never know with these things... sometimes things get added... I'm tempted to try to find a tiny bird to perch on it!

The lace was attached using tiny hand stitches.  Because the sinamay base is curved, I carefully stitched around it, then made a dart of sorts of the excess material and trimmed it back.  I then added a few stitches to the raw ends, and covered all of those workings with the feathers and motif.  These are glued down, making the joint even more secure.

Hope you enjoyed the eye candy!  What will you use your lutradur lace for?

Try It Out Thursday : Matching Bookmark.

The observant among you will realise that this post is a day late.  That would be because I went to visit a coaching client, went fabric shopping, generally got diverted and started making this project a tad on the late side.  That meant it didn't dry in time... so we're doing it today, instead.  I won't mention the forgetting to take the final photo and waking up at 2am thinking...oops...

I thought we'd try out a small, fast project, just in case you want to try out the paint splodging technique I used earlier in the week, but don't want to make a larger project.  So... I thought I'd continue in the book theme, and make a bookmark to go with the journal.  I cut a piece of Lutradur 130 (you could use 100, or even 70, at a pinch), six inches wide and the length of the journal.  I then folded it in three equal parts, to make a 2" column.  I opened it out again (see picture above) and laid it flat on a piece of scrap board, and added fabric paint, using the method here.  The only difference is that I added much more paint this time than I did for the journal cover; you can see that from the image below.  Don't go overboard, though, or when you brayer it, the paint will ooze out of the sides and be wasted.

 I folded it back up again, and ran a brayer over both sides.  This brought the paint to the surface, and created a bookmark shape. 

However, until the paint dried, it would not hold together, so I wrapped it in greaseproof paper and put it under a large pile of books for an hour (if you have a book press, that would be ideal).  When I brought it back out again, I put it onto the ironing board on another piece of greaseproof paper, pressed one side, turned it over, pressed the second side and left it to dry.  This ensured that the paint stuck to itself and to the Lutradur. 

The finished bookmark was large enough by itself to be used right away, but I wanted to add a few fibres at the bottom, just for interest, so I cut a hole at the bottom of the bookmark, using a paper cutter.  That worked beautifully (to my surprise; I thought it might have been a bit too thick).  I then threaded some hand dyed fibres through the hole, to produce the finished item.  This is a really quick project, though there is some drying time.  They would make good little gifts, or raffle prizes. 

Try It Out Thursday : Journal Covers (Decoration)

On Tuesday's blog, we made the basic cover for a soft bound notebook.  Now, we're going on to embellish it a bit, before we cover the book itself.  The painted colours were quite strong, so I wanted something that would stand out.  And I started with a button, a lovely pink button, which I put in the middle of the cover and thought...yeah.. that's the centre for a flower.  Not any old flower, either, but a daisy.  So, I went to find some fabric, thinking that I really wanted something yellowy, and found some white fabric with an abstract daisy print (I bought it some time ago, and have never used it; it's now on the pile to be used sooner rather than later...). 

I cut a piece of the fabric roughly the same size as the front cover of the book, and ironed on some fusible.  I put the button roughly in the middle of the paper coated fabric, so that I could see the scale that the petals needed to be drawn at, and drew a freehand daisy shape onto it.  With each petal, I started at the button, and returned to the button, drawing round it slightly before making the next petal.  You might want to practice this on a piece of paper, first.When taking a photograph for the blog, I discovered that you couldn't make out the pattern, so inked it on with a marker pen.  This proved to be a mistake, as you will see. 

The original drawing, just using a ballpoint.

Inked in with marker pen for visibility.

AAARGH... See those blue marks?

 I had forgotten that I had been working on a soft surface (my ironing board).  As a result, when I used the ballpoint pen on the fusible backing paper, it had torn, slightly.  When I then inked up the design so you could see it, the ink travelled on the greaseproof paper, and got onto the cloth, mostly around the middle.  The button doesn't cover it enough, and it looks truly out of place.  Next time, I'll use a pencil for this task!  Right now, though, I need to think about what to do to camouflage the rogue marks. 

I fused the flower shape onto the front section of the cover, overlapping the petals at either side (if you click on the image directly above, you will be able to see the fold lines that indicate where the flap is on the right hand side, and the centre of the cover on the left.  That makes the design much livelier, as you will see in a moment.  I then stitched round the petals using straight stitch.  I did that to ensure that the stress of opening and closing the book would not unstick the flower.  I used straight stitch, instead of the zig zag stitch you might have expected because I like rough edge applique, but also because the flower shape is quite delicate; zig zag, even in white, would have detracted from the fresh look of the piece.  The stitching is barely noticeable, which for me, in this particular design, is what I was aiming for.

I then went on a hunt in my studios for something to camouflage the blue dots.  I found a small piece of scrap silk paper, which I had used on a hat project, and cut a freehand circle larger than the button.  That worked very nicely, and pulled the whole piece together.  We assume that mistakes are Bad Things; I prefer to look at them as opportunities...this certainly proved to be the case here.  I stitched the button to the silk paper circle, to create a single unit (much easier to handle than trying to add two separate elements at once, or separately), and then stitched the button in place.  Success!

Before I assembled the journal, which is now nearly finished (above), it struck me that I wanted to make the covers for these paper bound journals permanent.  The original covers are relatively flimsy, much less so than the Lutradur XL.  So, I devised a different way of finishing these journals, compared to the quick and easy version I have already showed you.   We'll look at that on Tuesday.  Meantime, happy sewing!

Try It Out Thursday : Working To A Theme

Today's post is not quite what I'd intended; I've had a couple of domestic crises, today, leaving me unable to actually make the piece... but I thought I'd talk about the thinking process for something like this.  Well, okay, my thinking process; you may approach working to a theme quite differently.  And that's as it should be.

Of course, you begin with the basics; what do you want the journal for?  What size does it need to be?  I talked about the basic process of making a cover in Tuesday's post, so I won't repeat it, except to say that you can decide for yourself what size you want the inner flaps! 

What theme?  I try to start with the bigger picture, and then work my way down into the detail.  My current interest is flowers, so I thought I would make that my starting point.  I have made a number of garden themed quilts and paintings, all with mixtures of bright colours.  As it is springtime, I intend to make a background of greens, yellows and pinks as a base, using transfer paints, in a similar way to my earlier works. Once I have transferred the colour to the base cloth, I will start to think about how to add some specific floral shapes onto the background... so watch this space...

Try It Out Thursday : Hot Stuff

You will remember this pattern from Tuesday's blog, a transfer dyed monoprint on Evolon.  As you can see, I took three full prints, and two partial prints, with the prints gradually getting lighter. You probably think that I've arranged them in the wrong order, as the third one is stronger than the second, but not quite as dark as the first.  Interestingly enough, that isn't the case; I have arranged them in the order they were made.  So what happened?

 The first one, on the left, was made with a very hot iron.  So hot, that it made some of the paper stick to the fabric, and changed the texture of the Evolon somewhat, making it smoother, more like paper, than it is in its natural state.  So...I turned the iron down a bit.  The second print was made with a cooler iron, and whilst the texture of the Evolon didn't change much at all, the print is noticeably lighter.  So...I turned the iron back up again, and got another strong, dark print. 

The moral of this tale?  Not sure that it really has one... but why not try this exercise, starting with a medium hot iron, and see what happens.  If you want to share your results, send them to me and I'll put them up in a separate post. 

Try It Out Thursday : Combining Lutradur And Evolon (cont)

So... did you try Tuesday's little exercise?  If you did, and if your iron was hot enough, what should have happened is that the lutradur and the evolon bonded together.  Depending how long you ironed them for, you might not have been able to separate the two without tearing the lutradur. 

Why might you want to do this?  After all, Evolon has a wonderful texture; why would you want to hide it?  Oe reason might be to add an inclusion which you don't want to stitch into.  I've used a scrap of fabric, here, just as an example, it was lying about on the ironing board...  but you could put a piece of paper, a feather, a leaf, anything that  you feel you would like to use as an inclusion, but which stitch isn't ideal for.  If you don't want to add colour to the inclusion, make sure that you cover it with a piece of blank paper, cut to that size and shape, before you transfer the colour. 

Why not try it?  What else might this technique be useful for?

Try It Out Thursday : That Piece of Lutradur...

...really did change my perception of that quilt.  If you've been following the saga, you will know that so far, I've taken a piece of lutradur which I'd printed on using acrylic paints, and added it to an existing quilt.  After stitching it onto the quilt, I coloured it, and then... dear reader... I burned it.  But to my surprise, I didn't do anything like the amount of burning I had intended.  The original thought was to get rid of almost all of the lutradur, leaving only the paint marks and the quilt below.  In fact, I liked what was happening on the surface so much, that I kept a significant part of the lutradur.  Only problem was, that the bottom half of the quilt looked stronger than the top.  So, dear reader, I bit the bullet and... cut it up.  I ended up with this:

Much smaller...and the focus is now on the focal point, where it should be, and not wandering down the quilt wondering why those quilted lines are there...  I did have a small problem, though.  Where the paper stuck to the lutradur/paint, was one or two little white splodges.  So...I picked off what I could, and then coloured the remainder with some acquarel watercolour crayons. 

This final shot shows you the melted lutradur.  It's interesting to see the contrast between the stitched cloth (cotton, stitched with heavy thread in the bobbin) and the melted lutradur; some of the stitch is hidden underneath the lutradur, other parts are exposed, making interesting shapes. 

When I teach a workshop, I always ask the same question at the end of it; what have you learned?  I wonder what you have learned by following this exercise?  Please, if you would, share the first answer that comes into your head in the comments below.  Often, by sharing learning with other people, we recognise things about the whole experience, that we don't get by keeping our thoughts to ourselves.

I do hope you found this exercise interesting. I'm quite pleased with the new, smaller piece, though I do feel there is possibly still more to be done with it.  I'll live with it a while, and see.  What do you think?  Is there something you think should be added?  I can't promise to follow your suggestions, but I will think about them, and tell you what I think in return....  I'd really like this to be an interactive community; it's difficult to talk into a vacuum.  If you don't tell me what you want, then you might not get it...and that would be a shame.

Try It Out Thursday : Finally Finished!

Well, if you remember, I asked for comments on Tuesday.  The two I got were unanimous... that flower was too strongly coloured...right shape, right size, just wrong everything else!  So, I thought... what could I do about it? 

As you know, when you transfer dye something, you get more than  one print from the paper (up to five, if you're lucky, but at least three).  So I took another piece of the lutradur from the same dye batch, and stitched into it, as you can see below.

Then, I cut out two freehand floral shapes, put them on top of the piece, and added a freshwater pearl, like so:

Well, yes, it's an improvement... but it's not quite right.  So, out with the heat gun... remember, if you try this, that your small shape will get Even Smaller when you heat it, so a. cut it a bit bigger than you want it and b. don't hold it in your fingers when using the heatgun (I pinned mine down to a table top using a pencil). 

As you can see from the close up, below, I've added a tiny bit of the Zeelon that covers the whole piece, just to link it properly to the whole.  And there we are, finished at last!

Try It Out Thursday : After The Spray...

Remember Monday's post?  Well, having made all that sprayed fabric, I wanted to find something to do with it.  So, when in doubt...yes, you know it.... make a postcard.  I've been making a lot of felt recently, and when I spotted a handful of dyed Wensleydale wool tops that sat beautifully on the sprayed Zeelon, I thought it would be useful to do something with them.  What better than a bit of hand felting?  I've used Lutradur for felting before, but never Zeelon.  So...I positioned the Zeelon carefully on a piece of Lutradur XL that had been cut to postcard size.  I wanted to avoid the scarlet dots which I disliked when I sprayed the original piece, as well as the watermark I created when I tested it for colour fastness. 

Having established I could do that, and which way up I wanted to work, I started trying out the fibres on the cloth.  The first photo, below, shows a wisp of wool tops on the fabric.

 Not a good look; it doesn't show either fabric or fibres to good effect.  So... I moved to this...

...yup, that looks better... and finally to this...

...notice, by the way, that the design has changed a little, has moved across to the right of where I originally started, for no reason other than I like it better.

Why did I use a single needle, and felt by hand?  Because I wasn't using much fibre, and didn't want the holes to appear on the cloth, as they  might have done if I had used a machine, even if I did take out some of the needles.  As it was, I still have holes in one or two places where they shouldn't be... but that's okay.  
My original intention was to felt the fibres straight through the Zeelon and into the Lutradur.  Nope.  I was surprised at how much work it took to get the fibres through the Zeelon, though I suspect that had I used the machine, it would have been much quicker.  I'll fuse the piece together instead.  For obvious reasons, you really don't want to try felting through fused fabrics...

So...what next?  I have a plan, but what would you do?

Try It Out Thursday...More Spray Colour

I thought I'd make a little experiment with the coloured cloth I made earlier this week, as we saw on Tuesday.http://spunbondsensations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/try-it-out-tuesday-spray-colour.html  I have a spray called 'PrintGuard', which is intended as a waterproofing agent for inkjet prints, predominately.  It also 'enhances UV light resistance', so seemed promising to work with Brusho, a water soluble ink.  So, I tried spraying both sides of the cloth with it.  (Why both sides?  Well, because both sides show almost identical colour patterns, so I wanted to preserve them both.)  It passed the lick test (not quite as disgusting as it sounds... lick finger, see if colour comes away from cloth...); however, when I tried dabbing it with a piece of dampened kitchen roll, look what happened...

...whilst that isn't as big a loss of colour as it would have been without the spray, it's still significant.  You can see how the pigment has moved to the edges of the dampened section of the cloth; fine if you intended that, but not so good if a bit of damp has got into your image...  So, I sprayed both sides again, let it dry (it dries very quickly).  This time...

...as you can see, very little came off on the kitchen towel.  I think that a third spray would be enough to ensure that the odd bit of damp won't be a problem at all.  Interestingly, the white dot to the left of the image is not where I took the colour from, but rather was a part of the original patterning... the dimple just above it is where the colour was tested.

Worth having?  I think so.  I spray all my photographs with this stuff before I stitch them, to make sure that ink doesn't spread about the image on my hands.  I think I'll be doing the same with all water based substances from now on.  More experiments with sprays next week...