FOG Tuesday - FOG Gets Heated Up

Our May session of FOG started off as usual with our warm up collage exercise - materials supplied and only a 1/2 hour to complete it. This month we created collages based upon the design principle of Scale and Proportion.

Our collages

Scale refers to the relationship between two or more objects, one that has a commonly known size (usually compared to our own human scale). Proportion has a subtle distinction to scale. It refers to the relative size and scale of the various elements in a design. The issue is the relationship between objects, or parts, of a whole. (How wide it is compared to how tall it is.)

Next we moved on to using our heat guns to melt and distress Tyvek®, Tyvek® fabric, chip bags that had foil linings, Evolon, Organza, Lutradur (a spunbond web material manufactured by Pellon), other spunbond fabrics and various miscellaneous materials people brought to try. Some of us were very meticulous in making notes on their results, while others of us just winged it and trusted their memories.  We even had some Tyvek® beads being made, although we have posted on these previously when we did our bead making day last year.

Tyvek - one side painted

Tyvek with soldering iron craters

One of the really interesting things about Tyvek is that the bubbling occurs on the opposite side to the side being heated. So, painting it green on one side and then heating that side results in some white bubbling with green background. If you then take a soldering iron to the bubbles, you create some interesting craters. Combining the Tyvek and organza also produced an interesting result.

Tyvek beads

Lutradur (face) and Evolon

Tyvek with Organza

Mystery material

As you will see there were lots of marvellous results.  It was a wonderful day, and the weather co-operated so that we could do our heating outside....no fear of causing the fire/smoke alarm to go off.  We have done that a few too many times!!

Chip bag inked with alcohol
inks,plus the reverse
of the Tyvek with craters

Another mystery

Several examples, including chip bags

Look at these notes!!

Textures

Coming from a long career in quilting I understood that the actual quilting was an integral part of the overall product, but was a minimalist when it came to the quilting of my quilts, enjoying the process of colour and fabric selection much more than the final quilting of the project. The choice of thread colour and overall pattern added dimension and interest to the quilt and the advent of free motion quilting and thread painting added much needed depth and texture to an otherwise flat plane.

Now that I have mostly abandoned the making and quilting of large quilts and choosing instead to focus on smaller fibre art and mixed media pieces texture has become a very important aspect of the work. Texture can be added by using varied and interesting items such as threads, dimensional items like painted and heat altered Tyvek™ and Lutradur™, spackle, modeling paste, layers of papers, found objects, raised embroidery stitches and beads.

These past few weeks I have been taking an early morning walk, mostly for the exercise, but as I was passing manicured gardens, broken brick walls and construction sites I began to notice all the interesting textures around me so have been taking my trusty little digital along to document them.

Textures can be nature made, nature made and altered by nature, nature made and altered by man, man made, man made and altered by nature and man made and altered by man. Here are just a few of them.

I hope to translate these textures into my fibre arts and mixed media pieces over the next months..