Pigment Painted Fabric

Panel One

Panel Two

Panel Three

Earth pigments on silk crepe de chine fabric.  Now to get them ready for stitching!

WIP - Untitled

I started this piece a good eight or nine years ago and completely forgot about it, well this week is it's week to come to life. 

Layered rust, indigo, and compost dyed, silk, cotton, and cotton linen blend fabrics.

WIP - Queen Anne's Birds now with more stitching.
It's now cool enough I can stand to be in my studio for more than five minutes to get some work done

WIP - Hands 070412

Now with machine stitching.

I will be adding more surface embellishment to the piece once the heat wave passes, right now it's just too hot to do much of anything.

WIP - Queen Anne's Birds

Some detail shots of the stitching thus far.

My Creative Process Part 3 of 4

The more I think about my creative process, the more I don't want to think about the it!  While I'm a process oriented artist, I'd rather be "doing" the process than simply writing about it.  So today, in pictures, this part of the process of writing about my creative process is all about auditioning a piece in progress.  And I'll probably post more photos in the next day or so as I work towards completing this piece.

Digital printed cotton fabric, printed from one of my photo collages, layered atop a piece of painted timtex.

I've been having a very hard time bringing myself to cut up, stitch, or otherwise use this piece of fabric.  And that is odd.  Odd in that I could easily print a hundred more of this collage onto fabric, paper, or whatever, so why not???

A digital piece of fabric that I printed from one of my photo collages, layered atop a piece of painted timtex.

And now with a digtially printed sheer silk organza fabric layed atop the other two layers.

And now with a layer of osage orange dyed silk organza layerd atop the previous two layers.

This piece will go through many auditions, layers, etc. before the first stitches take place, and once I start stitching I will then start auditioning more layers once again.

WIP - More Vines

Lots of hand stitching needing to happen now.

WIP - Hot Flash - Detail

Hot Flash in what I like to call the ugly duckling stage, but soon to become a swan!

WIP

Now with a little machine stitching, I still have a long way to go before this piece is finished.

Prairie Potholes No. 15

Finally home!

Bright Yellow Orange Fluffyness

Kamala dyed fancy yarn waiting to be couched down onto a new project.

Crow Work Finished

Crow work finished and awaiting it's niche.

Crow Work

New Crow piece from last Wednesday's Ustream episode.

Cutch and Madder Root dyed natural colored cotton muslin and dyed wool boucle yarn. 

Crow stamped with Setacolor Black Transparent Paint.

Machine Stitched.

6x8 inches.

Details

Final colors are added, time to finish the interior of this piece.

Details

Detail of machine stitching on rust dyed quiltlet.

Stitching Rust - One Option

Stablized rusted fabric, two layers (I know hard to believe) wool quilt batting, black cotton commercial backing fabric.

The quilt to the left was orginally as thick as the quilt sandwich to the right, heavy stitching reduced the piece to a very thin piece.

Already you can see how the heavy stitching will decrease the thickness of this piece.

I'm stitching the outer areas first with a dark rust colored thread, will come back in and fill the strata layers with two other colors of rust and ocher threads and finally will begin stitching the heavily rusted area in the center.  The reason for this approach is I don't want to have to change my needle, as the heavily rusted areas will dull the needle quickly, in order to finish stitching the outer areas once the center is finished.

I will fill the hole in the center, where the fabric rusted through, with decorative hand stitches and maybe some beads. 

Rusted Silk Carrier Rods

Rusted Silk Carrier Rods - stitched to Aquabond a water soulble stabilizer.

Detail 1

Detail 2 - I used a leather needle and heavy cotton threads to machine stitch the constructed cloth layer.

Detail 3 - some areas of the silk carrier rods were exceptionally stiff, I simply left as is on the surface.

Sewing Rusted Fabrics - The Fabric Rusted Through Now What???

My fabrics have rusted through now what?  Can I still use my fabrics? 

The anwser is yes you can still use your fabrics, with a little help from a quilters best friend iron on stablizer!

A small tid bit of rusted fabric that once lived in the fabric in the preceeding photo.

Heavily rusted areas that glisten, this glistening is due to the iron oxide deposits on the surface of the fibers.

A view of the area I will be working with, complete with a hole that has rusted completely through the surface.

Mistyfuse TM stabilizer, I pressed my top fabric first and then sandwiched the Mistyfuse TM between the top fabric and a piece of soft cotton fabric, as I will be using a wool batting and another backing fabric.  Needling is imporant for this piece hence the reason I chose to use the flannel. Cotton scrim is also suitable for this project.

The stabilizer and backing fabric are now adhered to the front fabric.

Here you can see the stabilzer and the backing fabric peaking through the hole of the rusted fabric, click on photo for larger detail shot.

Full view of the fabric after the backing fabric and stablilzer are put in place, I am now ready to make my quilt sandwich as usual and begin stitching.

Sewing Rusted Fabrics Tutorial

Sewing rusted fabrics is no different that stitching any other fabric except, and that's a big EXCEPT, when the fabrics are heavily rusted!  Then there are all sorts of problems that arise. 

For moderately rusted fabrics as seen in the above photo, a heavy cotton thread and a sewing machine needle with a large eye, like a leather needle, work well. 

But what does one do when the fabric itself or the thread shreds during the stitching process??? 

This tutorial will help you stitch those fabrics and get the look you are wanting.  I highly recommend having some extra rusted samples on hand and taking good notes on which processes worked for each sample, BEFORE you start the large commission piece.  Doing so will guarantee fewer headaches in the future ;-)

Materials Needed:

Rusted fabrics

iron on interfacing of some sort I use Mistyfuse TM

Sewer's Aid TM (Dritz) - liquid

Fray Check TM (Dritz) - liquid

Needles with large eye such as a leather needle

Heavy cotton or poly blend threads, rayon and silk thread will only shred to pieces in this process.

Nymo or Fireline for heavily rusted areas that you don't/didn't want to discharge.