Rescuing Ugly Fabric

(I'm so sorry this tutorial was so slow in arriving, life jumped up and got in the way of its completion!)

We all have them, even if we don't admit it: fabric scraps we bought on the sale table at the craft store ten years ago, stuff that was included in kits we never completed, and even more that we don't recognize but that wound up in our stash, nonetheless. We know we won't use these neglected fabrics. Not in their current state, anyway.

But there is hope for such castoffs, using inexpensive supplies from your local hardware or craft store and a little imagination.

I took this fabric:

... and turned it into this:

I also took this, a really horrible fabric that I would never use:

And turned it into this, a fabric I probably will use in the future:

 

Fair warning before you begin: this WILL change the "hand" of the fabric. The fabric will become anywhere from slightly to moderately stiff by the end of this process. However, it still stitches beautifully and as long as you're mindful of the limitations of your sewing machine needle- or your hand needles- to go through tough fabrics, you can add virtually endless, thin layers of stamping and paint.

Here's what you'll need:

~ Any fabric you know you will never use in its current state. The uglier, the better. Smooth fabric can yield good, crisp (stamped) images and more heavily textured fabric will yield a more distressed image, so choose according to your needs. I use cottons almost exclusively, so I offer no guarantees for how this will work on man-made fabrics!

~ Padded surface for printing. An old towel folded up will do perfectly, and it has the added benefit of being able to pin your fabric to it to keep it from shifting.

~Safety or straight pins. Inexpensive pins are fine for this job- they're going to get covered in paint anyway, so you won't be using these on fine textiles.

~ Acrylic paints in several coordinating colors. Craft paints work as well as artist quality paints for this technique. There are also several brands of excellent textile paints on the market, as well. Spend as little or as much as you like.

~ Fabric or textile medium. I use Delta Cermacoat or Liquitex Fabric Medium because it's what I have in the studio, but most acrylic paint companies make their own version that should work just as well. PLEASE NOTE: for this technique, If you are using paints specially formulated for textiles you will NOT need an additional fabric medium!

~ Stamps. This is the time to pull out and strut those hand-made stamps. Making your own stamps is incredibly simple and there are an almost endless variety of materials you can use, many of which will yield stamps that you can use for years. (I'll be working on a tutorial in the near future for making your own stamps and printing plates.) If you're using stamps that you haven't created yourself from original images, please be respectful of international copyright laws!

~ Paint palette or palette paper.

~ Cosmetic sponges or sponge brushes, and sponges that don't get stiff when dry. I find these sponges- great big yellow ones- in the hardware store in the cleaning supplies aisle. When I get them home, I cut them into smaller pieces. It's important to use these sponges for this technique because you want them pliable when dry.

~ Mister filled with water.

What you'll do:

~Using safety or straight pins, pin your fabric to your padded surface, making sure to pull the fabric taut without stretching it. This step is helpful but not critical with small pieces of fabric, but if you have a large piece of fabric you want to paint, it's going to want to shift and move a lot, even if it is pinned. If it isn't pinned, it could quickly become frustrating. Don't bother ironing out the wrinkles, they'll fall out by the time you're finished. You can use the fabric with its right side up or down, it doesn't really matter- you'll see little to none of the original print in the final product.

~ Spritz fabric lightly with water. You're not aiming to soak it, just to dampen it.

~ Set up your paint palette. Place a large dollop of each of two or three coordinating paint colors (in my case I used golden yellow, orange-red and red ) side by side. Then below them, squeeze out a large dollop of textile medium. I try to use a ratio of about 50:50 but you should read the directions on your textile medium because it may be different. Finally, off to the side of the palette, I often squeeze a smaller dollop of titanium white.

 

~ With a foam brush or sponge, swipe through one or two of the paint colors and the medium, picking up all three on the brush at the same time.

~ Brush paints and medium onto the dampened fabric, covering the original print as much or as little as you please. This is where the thicker paints will come in handy- they will provide more opaque coverage than thinner or liquid acrylics will. Allow the colors to blend on the fabric as you work, or if you prefer more defined blocks of color, you can do that, too!

 

 

~ Cover your fabric with paint, picking up occasional bits of titanium white to add variety and value changes.

 

~ Before the fabric dries, use the paint still in your sponge brush to add texture. "Slap" the fabric lightly with the flat edge of the brush in a pouncing movement. This will distribute unexpected splatters of paint across the entire surface.

~ The next step- stamping- can be done while the paint is still wet, or it can be done once the paint dries. For the sake of time and because I already have my paints and tools out and set up, I usually just work wet-into-wet.  Load a dry, pliable sponge with no more than two colors of paint (more and you risk muddying the colors) and a dab of the textile medium. I usually do this by mashing the surface of the loaded sponge gently with a craft stick to distribute the paint throughout the sponge. Dab the paint onto your stamp, covering the surface with a light coating of paint. Don't overload the stamp with paint or it will give you a smeared, blurry image.

~ Pick a spot on your fabric and stamp. More gentle pressure will yield a lighter image with a more distressed look. Firm pressure will yield a clearer impression. Continue stamping, changing paint colors (use clean sponges if necessary, to avoid muddying the colors), until you're happy with the design.

 

 

~ Allow fabric to fully dry. If your paints or textile mediums need to be set for color fast permanence, be sure to closely follow the instructions on your textile medium or fabric paints.

What's Keeping Me So Busy!

Hi everyone!

I know it’s been a week or so since I last posted, but I’ve been busy with all kinds of projects, some of which I’d like to tell you about today. But fair warning, this post is photo-intensive, so if you have load time trouble, I apologize.

First on the agenda is that I’ve decided to enter two of my assemblage pieces into a Call For Artists from the abecedarian gallery, in Denver. I found this listing on the Fiber Arts Calls for Entry blog. The theme of the show is “assemblage and collage” and gives free reign on the materials used in each piece.

I’m going to enter this piece (if you click on it, you'll see a larger photo of it), a collage of painted fabrics and paper, fibers, my own hand-made beads, a little bamboo and a bit of wire. It measures 12.5" by 16.5" without its frame and is now hanging in my husband’s office.

This is the second piece, which is a collage of painted fabrics and papers, lots of hand stitching, dyed scrim and thread, and hand-made beads and buttons. It’s mounted on white cotton.

The entries will probably go out tomorrow or the next day. Wish me luck!

The next project I’d like to share with you is some of the research I've been doing on a commissioned textile/quilt piece which I will be starting officially in late September. My hope for this abstract quilt is that it will be heavily textured, mostly linear but with a touch of chaotic movement- which is sort of my trademark- and wonderfully touchable. I will be attempting to force the piece to distort so that it will undulate gently off the wall, rather than laying flat, and I'll be stitching it before dyeing it.

Towards that end and for the last few months, I've been assembling quilt sandwiches using all different types of materials, such as paper, various shrinkable and non-shrinkable batting and interfacing, and synthetic fabrics. Each piece gets machine stitched, painted, dyed, shrunk, distorted... anything I can think of to alter the surface in the way I envision for the final piece. All of these test pieces are small; I'm keeping them in a 3-ring binder inside plastic page protectors just so I can keep all of them together with the notes I took while constructing them.

The first two pieces were stitched and then dyed, and even painted a bit after quilting. Not thrilled with the style though- too homey for my client, who wants clean, modern lines and edgy materials.

By now, though, I'm realizing that I want more densely-packed stitching, not less, so I start moving in that direction. Also looking for more distortion, I stitched the next piece to Tyvek and then melted it (NOTE: all reasonable safety precautions should be observed with this process... including the careful use of a respirator!)



I liked that look a lot but continued to experiment. I tried different stitch patterns in the hopes of moving the fabric around more, dyeing first and then stitching to emphasize the thread choices. and using rayon and other melt-able fabrics as backing materials.


I was getting closer to what I wanted, but just wasn't there yet, so I kept experimenting, this time with paper.

The first paper test was on an unpainted grocery sack that had previously been gesso'd (a white primer), and stitched to Tyvek. Then it was painted with acrylics and shrunk.


Pretty cool, though because it was brown paper and not fabric, the Tyvek met with some distortion resistance.

The next paper piece was painted first and then sandwiched with batting and muslin. I used various weights of thread on this, mostly just to see what they would do, and all of them preformed beautifully considering the thickness and texture this had.


The next few experiments surrounded the idea of using directional stitching to produce puckers and ridges. Some of these pieces were dyed first, some painted after stitching.


Finally, I hit upon the idea of adding movement and texture to the piece not just with stitching and foundation distortion, but by taking advantage of the damage the raw edges of fabrics suffer during the vat dyeing process.

By the time a piece of fabric has been soaked, dyed, soaked again, rinsed multiple times, laundered in the machine, and finally dried, the raw edges of even the highest thread count fabrics are mangled and frayed and absolutely lovely.

Occasionally, depending on what product you used to color the fabric, the fringe even collects a higher concentration of pigment than the woven fabric itself, which produces such lovely, soft, vibrantly-colored textures.

Wanting to play on this raw edge notion but still wanting to have a finished-edge quilt, I hit on the idea of stitching my surface treatment directly onto a finished and bound quilt sandwich.

I constructed a small quilt sandwich with a PFD white cotton top, wool batting (still in the hopes of producing some shrinkage and distortion later on in the process) and a white muslin back. I did a pillowcase turn to finish the edges. I stitched everything with white cotton thread because I want it to dye right along with the fabric.

To the finished backing, I stitched narrow strips of torn white cotton fabric. I placed them close together so they would shoulder each other around for space. The texture I achieved is almost too pretty to dye!



But dye it, I will, probably today or tomorrow. I expect that those fragile fabric edges will take qite a beating in the process and I can't wait to see what the final result will be. I will post photos in my next blog entry.

This post has gone on long enough for one day, I've no desire to monopolize your very precious time, so just let me remind y'all that not only is there still time to sign up for my grand opening give-away, but you can also enter up to three times by commenting on that post on three different days!

Keep flying high and happy creating!

Things I Love

Thread schmutz


(The threads that hang off the edge of fabrics after they've been washed, dyed, rinsed, soaked, washed again... well, you get the idea. Yes, I actually save this stuff... the birds love it for their nests and as often as not, some of it will end up in my quilts, too.)

Cheapest Alter-able Tool Ever:


(A wallpaper seam roller with sticky-backed fun foam shapes attached to it to create a continuous roller stamp. The plastic rollers are about a buck in the hardware store and the heavy wooden-handled ones, which are my favorite, cost about 6.00 but they last for years. The sticky-backed fun foam shapes can be bought in craft stores by the bucket, in the kid's departments. Each bucket is about four dollars. Use the shapes as-is or cut them up to alter them. My favorite way to "ink" them is to squirt paint/reinker/dye/textile paint/dye-na-flow/etc into a small polyester sponge- the yellow ones they sell in the grout or automotive departments that don't get stiff when they dry- work it in a little with a craft stick to even out the pigment and then roll the stamp roller onto the sponge. It's just like using an ink pad- which also works, btw.)

Over-Flowing Stamp Drawers


(This one contains as many of my favorite tribal stamps as it can hold. I've been carving stamps for years... can you tell I'm a little obsessed with it? These work great on fabric or paper.)

A Size 90 Topstitch Needle


(With ANY thread.)

Rain



(After months of drought.)

More Gradation and Odds and Ends

Mornings around here are quiet and soft. I'm an early riser and I like to hit the ground running... It's the perfect time to get a lot of work done before the heat really cranks up and while my energy is at its highest. But yesterday morning I woke up feeling restless and unfocused. I couldn't settle in and decide what I wanted to do. I wandered from space to space- the studio, the sewing desk, the garage- and nothing leaped out at me. I was on a slow build to a cranky day.

And then I noticed the terrible, mangled living room curtains. For various reasons (I have cats- 'nuff said), these sad, limp little sheers, which I had loved when they were new, have seen their last fabulous day and have been in a slow decline for a while. Looking at them made me crankier... until I flashed on that three-yard expanse of white cotton in my stash, begging to be turned into curtains.

Suddenly, my energy spiked and I forgot about how grouchy I was all set to be.


So, another gradation, this one intended to match the decor of my living room. Now, understand- my walls in that room are yellow . That's right, yellow. Stop laughing, they look great! The accents in the room are in rich browns and reds. So it made sense for me to do a scarlet ~> lemon yellow fade.


The colors turned out even more vibrant and beautiful than in the last batch, but this run had some difficulties. The two darkest pieces somehow wound up with small spots of a dark dye on them- I suspect the green dye from earlier in the week. I'm not sure how that happened because I had totally cleaned out the dye area before starting this new batch (even the tarp had been laundered). Nonetheless, there they are, little irksome spots. I hope I figure out where they came from before it happens to another batch. It doesn't matter in practical terms for this batch- it's just curtains for the living room and those spots will be easy to conceal- but it would be good to understand what happened, for future reference.

When I get the curtains stitched and hung, I'll snap some shots and post them. It's going to be all ragged edges for these babies... no tidy seams, no cut edges. I'm going to "collage" curtains. Sounds like fun, yeah?

That's the good news. The bad news is that we're now officially in a drought situation. We haven't seen rain in months and our city has clamped down heavily on water violators. Even if they hadn't, my own conscience would not allow me to continue using as much water as I have been in these last couple of weeks. So no more immersion dyeing for me for a while- at least not until this drought breaks.

In the coming weeks I'll use all these wonderful fabrics to print and screen onto, for experimenting with discharge pastes and soy wax batik, and of course, to make art quilts.

Odds And Ends

- The International Quilt Festival/Houston catalog arrived yesterday. It will take me the whole weekend just to read through it all and decide which class(es) I want to take. There's a three-day class on dyeing and constructing art quilts with silk (a fabric that I must admit intimidates me somewhat) which has me drooling into my bra, so that could be the winner.

- The hummers have returned. It's a little early for them so this could just be a lone rogue but I put one of the feeders out, anyway, and will keep it maintained until they migrate back across this area in the late summer/early fall. Wish me luck snapping photos- they're quick little guys who fly like they're on rails. The odds are in my favor, though... by September we'll be knee-deep in hummingbirds.

- I started a new quilt with some of my hand-dyed fabrics. It's not large, maybe 22" x 26".

This is a down and dirty photo of it in its planning stages. I take these photos once I'm satisfied with a layout, so I can disassemble the piece and then reassemble it properly with fusing, stitch, spray mount, or usually a combination of all three. The photo quality doesn't matter at this point- it's just a visual map.



This piece consists of a hand-dyed background in green, fused to Timtex for stability. It incorporates more hand-dyed fabrics as well as a dyed paper towel. This is a detail of some of the stitching:



(P.S. I hate knotting threads at the back of the quilt. Yeah, I do it anyway, but you can't make me like it).

- I've written an article about revitalizing your creative muse and have submitted it, along with a few photos, to the magazine Cloth, Paper, Scissors in the hopes that they will want to publish it. If not, I'll post it here, instead. Wish me luck!

- I've also decided to enter into The Eye of the Quilter: Inspiration contest, sponsored by Quilts, Inc., the amazing folks behind the International Quilt Festivals. This is a photographic contest- you submit three of your best photos (they don't have to be quilt-related), the ones that you feel inspire you the most. I've only just begun taking photos but what the heck? I'll never know what it's like to try these things if I just sit and watch them pass me by!

Have an awesome week and happy creating!
- Judi