More Three-Dimensional Flowers

Posted on January 24, 2014 by ruthlane under free motion machine stitching, surface design

I put together more three-dimensional flowers for my ice dyed flower piece. I used several different colors of cheese cloth replacing some of the darker cheese cloth flowers.

I think this helps as the darker flowers don’t take over as much.

I also started working on some organza flowers. These are burned around the edges but not stitched together yet. You can see one on the bottom left and towards the top right in this photo.

I made a couple of really light pink organza flowers too but I couldn’t get them to photograph well. You can see them if you click on the photo to enlarge and look carefully. I like the addition of the organza flowers. What do you think? The next step is to sew the organza flowers together. I’m trying to decide if they need beaded centers. If I do add beads it won’t be anything elaborate, just a few beads. Then I plan on making some three-dimensional leaves too. I haven’t decided what material to use yet but I am considering painting some green organza so they would be very light weight and not feel too heavy.

Stitching Leaves

Posted on January 17, 2014 by ruthlane under Dyeing, free motion machine stitching

I have been continuing to work on my ice dyed fabric flower piece when I have a few spare moments. I have finished stitching all the leaves with free motion machine stitching.

You can see here that I have a variety of shapes of leaves and the stitching really defines the shapes better.

I made some cheese cloth flowers but they are only pinned on presently. I decided that I needed some other colors besides the dark purple. Luckily I have other colors of cheese cloth in the appropriate colors. I have a few more flowers cut out but not stitched together yet.

While I was at my friend Carole’s house, we hung the piece up on her design board (I really need one of those). We tried different colors of background fabric. This photo is really dark but if you click on it, I think you’ll be able to see that the background is a dark green. It isn’t the fabric I will use as I will use a hand dyed one but just something that Carole had that was in the right color range. We also tried black, dark blue and a lighter green. This was my favorite so far.

Here’s a little bit closer view so you can see the stitching a little better. I still haven’t decided if I even really like the 3-D flowers or not. Definitely, I don’t like all of them the same color. So next step is to try different colors cheese cloth flowers and see if I can make some 3-D flowers from organza that will be a bit bigger. If I do use the 3-D flowers, I’ll also make some 3-D leaves. Most likely, I’ll make them from felt and add a bit of stitching for dimension.

Soy Wax Batik

Posted on January 11, 2014 by ruthlane under mixed media, surface design

My local surface design group met yesterday and we played with soy wax. I took fabrics that were previously dyed either naturally or with Procion dyes. I did have some white fabric but didn’t use much of it.

Here’s our wax set up and we used stamps, brushes and stencils to apply the wax. You can use almost anything to apply the wax so cardboard tubes, plastic bits from packaging, foam tubes and kitchen utensils were also used to apply the wax to the fabric.

Here’s Bunny using a stamp to apply wax to her fabric.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

These are a few of my fabrics after they were stamped with wax. You can see that the fabrics are not very exciting. Most were ones that I had dyed naturally and weren’t very exciting. After the wax hardens, then you paint fabric paint over the surface. I used Dye-na-Flow paint. I did try walnut ink but it didn’t hold after washing so that piece didn’t work out.

This is a shot of some of our work drying. Carole”s pieces are on the left. I also tried a few sketchbook pages which are on the far right.

This is a piece that Bunny did on silk. It reacted quite strangely to the wax so it will be interesting to see what the end result may be.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This slide show is of my finished pieces. After the paint is dry, I ironed the pieces between pieces of newspaper to melt most of the soy was away. Then I put them all in the washing machine with a hot water wash and laundry detergent. I then ironed the pieces again. This process is easier than traditional batik because the soy wax melts at a lower temperature and comes out of the fabric more easily. It was a fun afternoon and now I just need to decide what to do with my new batik fabric.

Overcoming Fear

Posted on January 3, 2014 by ruthlane under Dyeing, free motion machine stitching

Have you ever had a piece of fabric that you really liked but you couldn’t use it because you were afraid to “ruin” it? This is what happened with this particular piece of snow dyed fabric. It immediately reminded me of flowers and I thought it would be great to machine stitch the flowers. I dyed this piece of fabric nearly a year ago but I still hadn’t done anything with it.

So about 3-4 months ago, I finally got out some tracing paper to figure out where I thought it would be best to stitch.

I put the tracing paper over top and then drew in some flower shapes.

It took two pieces of tracing paper to cover the fabric which will be oriented vertically. Then, I couldn’t seem to go any further with it. I kept hemming and hawing about how I would hang it and how the edges would be done. And didn’t start any stitching. Finally, I decided I would just start stitching. All that back and forth was really because I was afraid to start. I’m not sure why, but I finally just couldn’t stand not doing anything with it and decided I would “just do it”.

I had some already painted fusible that I thought would work for leaves.

I tore up the fusible and placed the leaves. I had my flower pattern nearby so I could put the leaves in the appropriate spots without covering where I wanted to stitch flowers.

And then, since I already had the tracing paper right there, I used it to cover the fusible so that I could iron it on. I figured tracing paper was close enough to parchment paper that it would work. NOT! The fusible just glued itself right on to the tracing paper. Luckily, I hadn’t used all the painted fusible so I didn’t have to start all over again. You would think that this would be enough to stop me in my tracks but I just plowed ahead.

Here’s the entire piece after basting it to stitch and tear. This photo is a little bit more true to color than the ones above.

You can see the basting a little bit better in this photo.

Then I started stitching the flower shapes with free motion embroidery.

The flower shapes were not exactly like the traced ones but I just used the dye patterns to decide on the flower shape as I stitched.

This one I added a bit more stitching to give it a little more shape.

Then I started adding centers to the flowers.

This is my favorite flower so far. Next up is stitching the leaves. Then I have to decide what else I will add. I am thinking about adding some three-dimensional flowers and leaves, making all of these flowers background. And after that I will have to figure out how I will finish the piece. But at least I overcame my fear and got started.

A Beautiful Day to Dye

Posted on November 22, 2013 by ruthlane under Carding, Dyeing

I spent all day today dyeing wool roving, washed merino fiber and a shibori scarf. I used acid dyes to dye the wool. The scarf photos did not turn out so I will have to show you that one later when the light is better. My friend Paula came over and carded some really fine merino roving into batts and dyed a little fiber too.

Here is all the dye set out and one bit of dye mixed up. Most of the pots, I just dyed a solid color. But I did try a few pots with mixed dyes in them.

I had three pots steaming away on the stove.
Here’s a red one.
And a blue one.
Here’s some orange roving in the sink waiting to be put through the spin cycle on the washing machine.

Paula got her wool in at the end of the dye bath after it was nearly exhausted. This is a mix of blue and purple which actually looks better than this photo depicts. It is close to a pale denim color.
This is another one of Paula’s that is a really pretty very pale green.
Paula got three batts carded. This is really fine (15.5) merino and it is so soft.
Here’s a bunch of my roving hung up in the bathroom on the shower curtain rod. I couldn’t believe that I got black when I wasn’t trying. I was going for a deep blue but ended up with black. When I try to get black, it rarely comes out very well.
Here’s some more roving drying. The one on the left was done with three colors, violet, salmon and cherry red.

Since I had the dye pots out, I thought I’d dye more of the washed merino fiber that I have. I did blue,
really dark green,
and a mix of magenta and purple. Now I have bunches of pretty colors to use in my felting projects. The really bright ones are for cat toys. People seem to thing that cats need to have bright-colored toys.