Playing around

Recently I've been playing around with a few things just to see how they work. The first pic is of rust dyeing. When I was at the Festival of Quilts I met up with a few people from the BQL Yahoo Group. Sandy Snowden's stall was the meeting place where she showed examples of her rust dyeing and gave some instructions. Someone else mentioned that they used salt water to soak the fabric and sprinkled wire wool onto the damp fabric. Hmm.. I have salt in the cupboard and some wire wool too, let's try it. The damp fabric was placed overnight in a plastic bag with the wire wool and was washed out the next day. I'm quite impressed with the little speckly bits on the fabric so I might do this again sometime.

Another thing that I have tried is painting on a quilted piece. Other quilt artists have used this but I've never tried it. I have this piece of "quilt sandwich" on which I did some free machine practice for one of the bags that I've made (2nd pic), so cut to just bigger than post card size (3rd pic).

I've painted with white acrylic paint as a sort of primer, then mixed purple with the white and painted over that. I had some Stewart Gill bronze metallic paint which I dabbed over the whole thing with kitchen towel

The result is in the 4th pic on the top right of the photo (should have taken one on it's own really) when I'd finished paining and sandwiching together for a postcard.

The other postcards in the 4th pic are finished off UFO's that were hanging around. The one on the top left is wavy quilted using variegated threads on fabric paint dyed fabric. On the bottom left are oak leaf prints with a layer of Bondawebbed organza on top with hand stitching. The bottom right is a fabric woven card with Chevron stitches.

The last photo, which is a bit on the fuzzy side is some mulberry bark which I've glued onto calico then painted with some acrylic paint (that's on the left). After painting the surface of the plastic was quite wet so I took another piece of calico to soak up the wet paint. Not quite sure what to do with these two pieces. I'm sure the paint soaked calico will find its way to becoming a postcard back.

Seems to have been quiet on the blogging front from me. I'm still sorting through loads of stuff (where did it all come from?) so I'll have a little less to take with me when we move.