Machine Needle Felting / Embellishing / Dry Felting on Silk Velvet Samples Part 2

Today I set up a bit of white card to bounce the sunlight I had on hand so I could get a photo of the finished test samples up. These are the samples I posted a blog about the construction techniques yesterday (so see blog post below).

Materials are: Silk Velvet, Silk Hankies, Silk Satin snippets and one piece has Angelina Fibre on one end. These finished samples have had the water soluble stabiliser rinsed out and have been lightly hand felted with a little hand soap and hot water and then left to dry flat.

I like the very first trial best where the needle felting is done entirely from the front, that's the first square on the top piece (which has 4 different types of needle felting along the one strip).

Click to enlarge pic

I will be working on a new artist interview soon too so keep your eyes peeled!

-Neroli

Machine Needle Felting / Embellishing / Dry Felting on Silk Velvet

Hey All!
I've had a brilliant week! A friend sent me though a link to a great deal on a current, top of the range, refurbished iMac yesterday and I am now eagerly awaiting it's delivery next week. Very exciting! In between looking at pics of it and stroking them lovingly I have had time for a bit of a play on my needle felting machine.

Hand dyed silk velvet and matching colours of Angelina Fibres (LHS) and silk hankies (RHS) along with some silk fiber sample packs at the top of the pic.

I am wanting to use this gorgeous piece of silk velvet I got from Unique Stitching at this years AQC in Melbourne. It's screaming 'background' and the velvet has great sheen and depth in the dye tones that would make a stunning night sky. Lorraine Roy's brilliant art works in my interview with her have inspired me to do some more work with snippets and scraps - great timing as i've just finished cutting all the corners off the dozens of colours of silk my Mum brought me back from India so they don't fray in the wash.


The way i've spread out things in the picture above is my way of working when I've got a very vague idea of what I want to do based on a product or technique. I pull out the fabrics and products I want to use in colours that I think will work so I can view them all together.


Often I'll jump right in at this point but when I'm trying materials or a technique I haven't used before I'll often do a test piece - especially when one of the items is unique or expensive as with the hand dyed velvet.


I read somewhere that using silk hankies over silk velvet gave a great surface texture, so thought i'd try this out. Problem is since I'll be working on a largish piece (fat Q size) how to stop it distorting on the needle felting machine and how to felt to enhance rather than hide the beautiful texture of the velvet. 


Enter the test piece:

Water soluble Vilene, a snippet of the silk velvet and a silk hankie being layered ready for felting.

Click pics to enlarge - This is the test piece that I've separated into 4 squares and felted each differently. 

From left to right: 

1. Felted from the top only. 

2. Felted predominantly from the back (this created more pulls in the silk velvet and gave a rougher less shiny texture that I feel compromised the look and feel of the velvet). 

3. Felted from both sides. 

4 Felted with a layer of Angelina fibre and an additional silk hankie.

For this piece I added some silk snippets on top of the silk velvet, the RHS I felted without securing them in anyway and that gave a more random 'scraggy look. The LHS i covered with lightweight bridal tulle to felt and then removed the tulle mesh after. This worked well to hold everything in place though you do have to be gentle removing the tulle - most of it doesn't sink into the created fabric even after needle punching but every now and then it clings. You could also secure with a second layer of water soluble Vilene.

I've rinsed out and lightly hand felted the finished test pieces but await a sunny day where I remember to photograph them - will hopefully post pics soon. My consensus is that the snippets secured with the embellisher are a little 'scraggy' for the idea I have in my head but may make a good background layer to secure others with freemotion stitching. The silk hanky over the velvet worked well but I think I will use this more for shadow areas as it did still dull the sheen of the velvet a little too much for an all over use

Before starting this test piece I emailed my friend Fiona Hammond from Chiatanya Designs who does wonderful needle felted pieces and she gave me these great tips:

1. If you are making a reasonably-sized piece ( greater than 20 cm sq), you are likely to notice some stretching out of  shape. I had this happen in my background needle-felted fabric for  my Maharajah's Fantasy Bloom piece (which is about 40 x 60 cm, from  memory). I made this with wool roving - quite a lot of it layered up  - onto Solvy. As well as stretching beyond the size I thought I was  making, it did look a little bowl-like in parts. I got it fairly flat by ironing it intensely after washing out the Solvy (I can add  a special soleplate to my iron that allows me to iron pretty much  any fabric using steam settings).

2. When it comes to needle-felting your snippets of silk and threads to  the velvet etc. background, you will find that your little snippets  will change shape and move around as you needle-felt them into the background. If you are happy to just do it and see how the pattern/ texture turns out, you might find it great fun. 

If you want your cut snippets to maintain their shapes you may well end up frustrated, because this rarely happens with small pieces, in my experience, particularly if they have little points. This is because the act of needle-felting the bits will push the snippets out of shape somewhat while pushing them into the background. The snippets will often also seem to get smaller when you needle-felt them into the background.  And you have to be careful how you hold them in place as you do the needle-felting. Don't be tempted to use fingers.... I use the pointy  end of my seam ripper, but you still  need to be careful to keep it  away from the felting needles so they don't break on the seam ripper.

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

Interview series: Mixed Media Artist, Jane Davila

This weeks interview is with US based mixed media artist, writer, tutor and general all round star – Jane Davila!


Jane writes a regular business and marketing column for Quilting Arts Magazine (my favorite textile mag), has produced 3 really informative books (her 3rd 'Jane Davila's Surface Design Essentials' is just out) and teaches workshops internationally. On top of all of this she somehow manages to fit in making and selling her own art, designing websites, taking her patchwork store on tour to expos around the states and has guest starred on Quilting Arts TV. Not to mention taking the time to fill in interviews for little known Australian blogs :)

'Woodcut Fish' fibre art postcard 4"x6"

Click to enlarge pic
Cotton fabrics, block print, acrylic ink and pearlescent ink, metallic acrylic paint

 1. How long have you been quilting and what first drew you to it?  

I started out as a printmaker and came to quilting when my mom and I opened a quilt shop, The Country Quilter, in 1990 where I got a really good grounding in all of the basic quiltmaking techniques. I love the tactile quality of quilts, it's the same thing that drew me to printmaking – the texture and colors and hands-on processes.

'Strings' 6"x6"
Small fiber piece mounted on stretched canvas, cotton & silk fabrics, stamp, acrylic ink, linen floss

  2. How would you describe your style now? 

I'm definitely an art quilter although I still make pieced quilts occasionally for fun.

 3. How has your style evolved? 

I began with traditional quilts and quickly progressed to more contemporary quilts. Then in 2002 I began making art quilts when I realized that I could bring my art training and quilt training together. My studio space has been set up with my style of work in mind, so that all my favorite materials are close to hand.

Jane's gorgeous studio features lots of natural light, bookcases packed with stunning natural fabrics, paper displayed over rods and a dozen other things I could really get used to having around! Jane made most of her studio furniture herself including the floating workspace in the centre of the room. See her blog for a how she did it here.

 4. Apart from creating art what else to you do within the industry? 

I write books about art quilting for C&T Publishing (book #3, Surface Design Essentials, just came out!), I teach internationally, I write a column for Quilting Arts magazine called Minding Your Business about the business side of being an artist, I teach online courses as well as workshops in my studio, I have a blog, I tweet and I've got several products in development for the art quilting market. I have a sorely-neglected etsy store and I design websites for artists and others. What I don't have enough of is hours in the day for all the ideas in my head!


Last year in March my Mom and I closed our retail store after nearly 19 years. She has retired with my dad (and is finally getting the hang of it!) and I have taken our shop online and out on the road, vending at quilts shows around the country. Flourish, the name of my art quilting supply company, can be found at www.countryquilter.com

'El Diablito' 5.5" square
Cotton fabrics, hand-dyed wool, Loteria playing card, distress inks, hand and machine stitched

 5. What's the best advice you could give someone who wants to try quilting or textile art for the first time? 
Start with a manageable-sized project. Don't start with a king-sized quilt! I think that if you have a positive first experience and you finish what you start in a reasonable amount of time, you'll be more likely to continue than if you bite off too much and get discouraged.

 6. Do you exhibit your work? 

I do. I no longer apply to quilt shows and have much more luck with all media or mixed-media shows. As my work diversifies and moves farther away from traditional quilts, I find that gallery venues are better choices for me. I also work small and my work gets lost at regular quilt shows hanging next to bed quilts whereas galleries and art centers are better equipped to deal with making small work look great.

'La Sirena' 5.5" square
Cotton fabrics, hand-dyed wool, Loteria playing card, stamped text, hand and machine stitched

 7. How do you go about finding and selecting exhibitions? 

I subscribe to a couple of art magazines that list calls for entry and I haunt the internet – it's a tremendous resource for finding shows.

 8. Do you belong to any quilt associations? If so why did you join these ones? 
I belong to Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) and Surface Design Association (SDA) as well as the Nature Printing Society. I had let my membership to some local fine art guilds lapse due to lack of time and funds but plan to re-join this year. I try to find groups of like-minded people, although I don't tend to be a big joiner. I do also belong to some interesting online groups for assemblage and collage artists.

 9. What would you recommend people do who want to seriously get into textile art? 

Study a wide variety of techniques to start to narrow down where your specific interest lies. Take classes from a number of teachers in different venues if you can. Remember that once you've learned and mastered various aspects of your craft it is necessary to produce a lot of work on a consistent basis to develop your "voice", your unique viewpoint. Take in lots of information from lots of sources, internalize and process it and let it out as your original expression. Keep the parts of what you learn that work for you and discard what doesn't.

 10. What inspires you?  
So much! Color combinations in magazines and art, music, lyrics, poetry, nature, words. I carry a little Moleskine sketchbook with me and constantly doodle in it.

 11. What sewing machine / threads etc do you use? 
I have an old Bernina that I adore. It does just enough and doesn't do anything unnecessary for me. I love cotton threads for machine sewing, especially hand-dyed and adore linen thread for hand stitching.

 12. Do you have any formal art training? Do you think it's necessary? 

I am almost entirely self-taught and I continue that education every day. I am endlessly curious about art and life and science and spend a lot of time studying and researching. I do think that having a solid grounding in the basics of art are absolutely necessary to create successful artwork. 

'Anodyne III' 9"x12"
Mixed media fiber collage, cotton fabrics, paper and paper mesh, image printed on linen fabric and hand-colored, stamped text, distress inks, mah-jong tile, over-printed with found objects, hand and machine stitching, chunky zipper edging

 14. What's the most rewarding thing about your career? 

I love teaching and getting a chance to encourage people to try new things and challenge themselves. I love creating art and pushing myself to explore.

 15. How did you learn the techniques you use? 

I learned my basic quilting skills from my mom and from books. Art quilting techniques I learned by experimentation, from books and the internet.

 16. What are your favorite / least favorite parts of the quilting process?

I like the composing part the best, where I audition fabrics, cut and lay out pieces and start thinking about the quilting lines. I like edge-finishing the least so I don't often use traditional bindings on my quilts.

 17. What is your favorite technique? 

I love to paint on fabric. I don't have the patience for dyeing fabric and I try to avoid toxic chemicals and processes in my work, so painting with acrylic paints and inks suits me. I can get a lot of the same effects that dyers get with my paints and inks and there's little to no prep, no setting and no hazardous materials or dust masks involved. To get a beautiful background wash on fabric I add a small amount of acrylic paint or acrylic ink to a container of water and simply brush it onto prewashed white fabric. I can use more than one color, I can throw sea salt on the wet paint for star burst effects and I can scrunch, fold or lay the wet fabric over a surface for even more textural interest in the finished fabric. The paint or ink changes the hand of the fabric only minimally and is as permanent as dyed fabric. And I can whip up as small or as large a piece as I need in exactly the color(s) I need.

'Gyotaku' 7.5"x9.5"
Mixed media collage on bristol board, printed mulberry paper, gyotaku print on cotton fabric, stamped text, transfered text, embossed and printed papers, cotton fabrics

 For more on Jane: 

Books (all available through C&T Publishing):

• Art Quilt Workbook (co-authored with Elin Waterston)

• Art Quilts at Play (co-authored with Elin Waterston)

• Jane Davila's Surface Design Essentials

DVD's:

• One-Page Book (Quilting Arts workshop dvd)

• Jane & Elin Teach You Art Quilting Basics (C&T Publishing)

You can purchase autographed copies of all Jane's books, or sign up (if you're quick, it's just started!) for her online 'Jump Start Your Art Career' course by emailing Jane.

View more of Jane's work on her website or check out her etsy store.

I love feedback! Please comment below if you have any thoughts on this article or what you'd like to see more or less of in future interviews. –Neroli Henderson

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silks from India

Have finally gotten around to trimming off the corners then washing and folding lots of silk that my wonderful mother brought back from a recent trip to India and gave me for Christmas.

Since I have so many variations of similar colours I thought making a pieced quilt out of small hand cut strips and squares starting from one colour and going out from dark to light before merging to another colour might work well. The silks are quite fine so will probably need a little starch if not some sort of stabiliser before piecing. I don't really want to back them with anything else as it seems to take some of the point of making a silk quilt away.

Would love to hear other ideas people have for these fabrics. They certainly aren't ones I can just go out and buy again so there's a certain amount of trepidation when it comes to cutting into them. All pieces vary between about 25cm and 75cm in width.

Still have to wash the blues and greens. I wouldn't have thought it would take so long to do all the trimming and folding. Have lots of frayed threads from the edges I will try on the needle felting machine too!