'Brunelleschi's Broken Bicycle' 12x12" Art quilt

I made this quilt for the Aus_NZ Art Quilters yahoo group challenge. We all agree on a theme at the start of the year and then aspire to make one quilt per month to this theme. The best 5 of each person who wants to exhibit will be seen at next years Australian Quilting Convention in Jeff's Shed.

click pics to enlarge

For my first quilt for the year (hey I'm a late starter and arranging a wedding got in the way a little!) I chose  Italy and Florence in particular. One of the things that surprised me while honeymooning over there was the sheer number of broken bicycles that littered the streets - generally still chained to bike racks. Some corners had four or five formerly very expensive bicycles with wheels kicked in or bent frames.

To make this I:

• Cut bikes from a pre-printed fabric and fused them with fusible web to a backing fabric, I pleated and creased them before ironing down to abstract and 'break' the bikes.

• I made a bike wheel with Expander Paint (by Setacolor), I put some into a folded trough of aluminium foil, added a little black Jacquard Dye-na-flow paint and mixed. I stamped the bike outlines using a bamboo cooking skewer that I bent into arcs for the wheel.

• I ironed the Expander Paint to raise it (it's like 80's puff paint on steroids!) and then painted the middle of the tyre with gel medium with a tiny amount of gold paint mixed in followed by a gloss varnish.

• Rather than conventional binding I sewed around the edges and then bordered them with leather tonging that has been couched down. I figured leather was something else quintessentially Italian.

I wanted the worn look of stamping for the tyre as so much of Italy is, while beautiful, very old and worn without a lot of the upkeep that we saw much of in places like Paris. This was very noticeable in the main museums over there when compared with places like the Lourve.

'Hot Stuff #1' ATASDA Workshop Sep 3, 2011. Learn how to use heat guns, synthetic fabrics, Tyvek, Angelina fibre and Textiva (fantasy film).

I am pleased as punch to announce I'll be running my first Heat Tools textile / multimedia workshop for ATASDAVic in a couple of weeks on September 3rd. We will be painting and distorting Tyvek and then layering synthetic fabrics with Textiva (fantasy) film and Angelina fibres, stitching a resist and using heat guns for impressive (and easy!!) results.

You will leave with your own heat distressed mini quilt and a knowledge of how to incorporate each of those materials and techniques into your own work.

Hot Stuff #1

Date: September 3rd

Time: 11am to 3pm

Where:  

Hartwell Church Of Christ Hall, cnr of Milverton & Highfield Rds Hartwell. (off Toorak Rd)

Cost: $40 for ATASDA members, $45 for non-members.  $5 materials fee if needed.

Materials lists will be emailed to all who enrol.

To book call Barbara: 0419 396 695

You will be making something that could look like this:

And turning it into something that looks like this:

some close ups:

When you're done you may want to turn it into a purse, use it as a background, a book cover or a stand alone art quilt. Here's my demo piece pinned into a purse:

I really hope to see you there! It's late notice and ATASDA Vic's first own workshop, so they've kept the costs down. Take advantage and book in!

Neroli

Burning a Quilt - Textile art with a Heat Gun and Synthetic Fabrics, Video Tutorial

This is my newest textile based artwork entitled "Pushing Up Daisies". I've created a video above so you can see the heat gun in action melting and distorting the fabric.

NB. when burning or melting any synthetic fabric, or cutting or scoring with a soldering iron work in a well ventilated area and wear a mask suitable for gas or vapours. You can buy disposables from large hardware stores.

I like to play with contrasts and in this case the normally pretty daisy flowers have been melted, and burnt, I like the way that this keeps the fragility inherent with flowers while giving it a harder, grittier edge.

I've played with burning before, most prominently in my leaf quilts, but with all of those I was melting smaller pieces and then using them to make or add to a larger work. In this piece I wanted to do a larger work and then burn the entire thing.

I've layered synthetic fabrics (felt, organza and satins) over cotton and stitched with Madeira metallic gold rayon and variegated rayon threads. I quilted the background quite intensely with little spirals as I having dense quilting here makes the stems, leaves and flower heads stand up more, and that in turns means they will burn quickest.

I used gold and copper Shiva oil paint sticks (I think these are called Markal paint sticks if you're in the UK) over the background quilting, these seemed to retard the heat effects on the background areas and the heat gun set the paint sticks instantly while only changing the colour slightly.

I love quilting on satin. The sheen really adds to the curves created by the quilting lines. The burnt areas of this are now essentially plastic, so it will either be framed or edged and hung for a wall piece.

Heat gunning will shrink a piece and I find it quite fun to watch it flatten and pull together. It helps the lesser quilted areas stand up even more.

This is my first video and I'm going to hopefully do some more in-depth video tutorials (both free and subscription) in the future. As always would love to hear any feedback - please leave a message in the comments section below.

Neroli

Two Tone Silk Pillow Case Tutorial and a Happy Bichon Frisé

After searching for a couple of years now I finally found a doona cover / pillowcase set that I loved and that would go with the gold sari silk bed-head and bed-skirt I made awhile back. (Amazing what you can do with a nice piece of fabric, a bit of foam and a staple gun!) This set is called 'Love Bug' by Morgan & Finch. I laid it on the bed to test if it matched before washing and when I came back with the camera this is what I found:

Note the small fluffy thing that had made herself extremely comfortable. Very glad they matched the bed head and I didn't want to return them!

I wanted to make a couple of to match. The metallic green vine and embroidered bugs are cute but all the white was a little too stark for me. I have very fine hair and usually sleep on a satin pillowcase (a tip a very smart hairdresser gave me to help grow my hair long - apparently silk and satin cases stop hair breaking so much). So I rummaged through my stash and found a couple of nice silk fabrics and used the pinky one on the back with the envelope closure and the shot mauve colour on the front. Put them on the bed, went to get the camera and found this:

I thought i'd try again this morning so made the bed, came back with the camera and.....

well let's just say I don't like my chance of getting a dog free photo in the next century, and at least in the first two she didn't mush everything about. Sigh....

Here's how I made them (NB. this may not be the best way to make pillowcases, and I'm not known for functional sewing but it was quick, easy and worked!).

 Two-tone silk pillowcase tutorial: 

1. Iron both colours of silk fabric. I used a shot one for the top piece to get a decorative selvedge.

2. Lay the backing fabric out folded (so you can cut two at once cutting off folds as you go). Butt a pre-existing light coloured pillow case up to the selvedge edge and mark the width of the envelop flap (a light colour means you can see the where the flap ends through the fabric). For marking I used a ceramic fabric marker but you could use a water soluble marker or even go old school and use tailors chalk :)

3. Move the pillow case over the width of the envelope flap and trace around the entire case. I used a quilting ruler to help get the lines square and straight.

4. Add seam allowance (I used 1cm) and cut with a rotary cutter and quilting ruler. The selvedge on the envelope flap end means you don't need any that end... plus you get out of hemming. My sort of sewing! Take these 2 backs to the ironing board and iron the folded flap down firmly to crease.

5. Lay out the folded front fabric and place one of the cut backs on top of this to use it as a cutting template. Align the fold on the edge of the backs with the selvedge of the front fabric to avoid hemming. Additionally as I used a shot piece of silk (one direction of weave is blue, the other fuchsia)  the selvedge is a contrasting pinky red colour which makes for a nice decorative edge. Use the roller cutter and ruler again and cutting is done for 2 pillowcases!

6. Match right sides together and made sure the selvedge of the front piece is even to the fold line of the envelope closure on the other. I don't use pins, I always finish up pricking myself and bleeding over whatever I'm making :) If you're not confident the fabric won't slip either pin or use a water soluble glue to hold them even.

7. Overlock (serge if your in the US) using a standard 4 thread stitch. This way there's no need to straight stitch on the sewing machine first. I did this from open edge down and then flipped and did the other side. I trimmed off about 1/4" when I did this to get rid of any fraying. Doing each side from the open end allowed me to ensure the opening edges were perfectly alligned.

8. Overlock the bottom edge. 

9. Lastly I used a very fine needle to pull through the overlocker tails under a couple of the existing stitches, that way there's no chance of it unravelling. You could use a dot of fray stop or reoverlock instead.

10. Lastly I put them on the bed and tried to convince dog they weren't for her.  That failed, but the pillowcases were done!

I am lucky enough to have a Babylock overlocker which means I never have to do any tension changes and it just sews perfectly on any thickness of fabric. It was this and the air threading - meaning I could rethread my machine with colours that matched the silk in about 2 minutes (including changing needles) that made me want to spend the extra money. So far I'm really glad I did. I think with an ordinary one I'd be tempted to just use the sewing machine instead and have the overlocker languish in the cupboard.

Let me know if you have any questions and leave any other pillowcase ideas in the comments section below.

Neroli

Tutorial - Foiling Fabric

I needed to create a moon for an art quilt I'm currently working on. I wanted something that really glimmered and shone but still had some texture. After toying a few different ideas (lumiere paint, tyvek, lutrador, angelina layers, textiva, glass organza, rainbow shimmer chiffon etc etc) I decided to use some silver glitter white cotton layered with some jones tones foil.

The foil is washable and can be put down in a few ways. I used heat and bond fusible web to get a flat even coverage.

Here's how:

1. You will need: Non stick baking paper, backing fabric, jones tones foil (from spotlight or speciality art / craft / textile stores), fusible web, scissors and an iron.

2. Layer your backing fabric (right side up), and fusible web (paper side up) between baking paper. Iron to fuse the web to the fabric. Use the dry setting on your iron.

I used a heavier weight fusible web as I didn't want any areas without foil. A lighter weight like misty fuse or vliesofix will only have the foil adhere to the lines of web. This can give a nice effect but wasn't what I wanted for this.

 

3. When cool peel off the backing paper. This will have given the fabric a very shiny laminated type effect that can be useful in itself. However we're going to use this to adhere the foil to.

4. Place the foil, shiny side up on top of the web covered fabric. Still work between baking paper to protect the iron and quickly press to glue to the web. Be careful not to iron for very long as you will change the foils texture and lessen its iridescence.

5. When cool peel off the shiny cellophane top layer from the foil. The foil itself should have stuck firmly to the web. If it hasn't you may need a little more heat from the iron.

6. Trace the design you wish to cut from your newly foiled cloth onto it's back. I used a water soluble marker in case it showed through on the edges, but a light line with a grey lead should work fine too.

7. Ta Dah! One moon. I attached mine to the quilt with Vliesofix before stitching. I kept heat on for longer then i should have when ironing this directly to the foil and you can see the change in texture. Since the irridescence is still intact and I was aiming to add texture with stitching anyway I decided it actually worked well for what I wanted. You can see how it differs from the original foiling as I have placed a piece of that to the left of the moon.  I've used a holographic silver thread for the freemotion quilting.

You can also foil by layering it on top of bonding powder for a glittery effect or rubbing it over dry glue like Jones Tones Plexi glue for a 3D raised effect. Share

Tutorial for machine needle felting and heat fusing synthetic fabrics.

This is a Journal quilt (A4 size) created with layered synthetic fabrics on felt, the whole lot is covered in organza, the figure stitched and then felted on my needle punch (embellisher) machine. I've felted predominantly from the back of the piece to make the black of the felt push through to the front.

You can see the back and a close up below.

There's a tutorial for the technique on my website here:

http://web.me.com/eiloren/eiloren/Tutorials/Entries/2009/1/4_Machine_Needle_Felting_and_Fusing_Synthetics!.html