FOG Tuesday - Bead-azzled

Our December FOG session was a wonderfully calm warm day for December, which turned out to be a great help as we had a lot of people making beads with the heat guns and we were able to do that outside.

We started as usual with our embroidery stitch warm up. Our stitch for the day was the Danish Knot Stitch. This is an easy knot and thoughts were percolating around which project to use it on by using it to create some texture, particularly when it stitched in groups.

Next we started making beads. There was a plethora of materials provided for those who got kits and no one was able to use everything!  

The basic process is to wrap your material around a knitting needle or bamboo skewer. Depending on the material, you can glue it, or use a heat gun to bind the materials together. Possibilities abound, limited only by one’s imagination. As you can see from the photos, many different types of beads were created.

Once completed, the bead was coated with Triple Thick by Americana to add a glossy finish to the bead. This product is a thick varnish which can also be used like glue. After the first coat the bead can be rolled in seed beads, or micro beads, while the coating is still wet. Once the first coat is dry, another top coat can be added to really seal in the beads. Another finishing touch was to wrap around the bead, by itself or with seed beads threaded onto the wire.

Some of the materials used to make our beads included: Tyvek, plastic film, plastic sheet protectors, shrink film (in clear and matte), security envelopes, origami paper, newsprint, abaca mesh and paper, angelina (or Textiva) film, Angelina fibres, polyester fabric, wire, dryer sheets, needle felted organza, sequin waste, organza fabric, painted Lutradur, painted fusible web, tissue paper, felt sewn with a decorative stitch, and corrugated paper.

These will be great to use on mixed media or fibre art pieces or in jewellery.

 

The possibilities are endless and we really only scratched the surface, in spite of the quantities of beads created.

We finished off the day with a present to everyone of an organza ribbon necklace for that special bead!

FOG Tuesday - Not Con"fusing" at all...

We started our day as usual with Jan teaching us a new embroidery stitch, this time the Closed Cretan Stitch. We all agreed that it was a pretty stitch and would be very versatile in borders and making leaves. Donna commented that she had always made leaves with a satin stitch and that this would be her new go-to stitch for leaves in the future. It was particularly attractive when embroidered in variegated thread and depending on the length of stitches used on either side of the braided centre line and how close you made the rows of stitches it would have a variety of looks.

Mark making on our layered pieces.

While we were small in numbers, we were huge in enthusiasm when it came to our main FOG Tuesday project.

As always when working with a tool that burns, we had to be mindful of good ventilation and NOT triggering the smoke alarms. In this case it was soldering irons, melting, fusing and mark making  our sandwich layers of stitched acrylic felt, synthetic organza, Angelina^© fibres and film, lamé, Lutradur^©, Evolon^© and other materials that would burn or melt.

Wire wool to clean soldering iron tip.

Remember to have a container with wire wool in it to clean the melted residue off the tip of your soldering iron.

The basic technique was learned from the two books by British textile artist Margaret Beal. You can access two short videos by Margaret on YouTube.

Stitched layers by Jan.

The more layers the better as it gives you more areas to “excavate” your final piece. Once you have all your layers, stitch a pattern on the surface using cotton thread. This is important as you do not want the thread to melt while you are burning out the pattern.

3-D flower "stitched" by Chris.

You can use the tip of the iron to “stitch” layers together as in the case of the green flower made by Chris.

Keep a look out for metal items that can be used as stencils with the soldering iron. The daisy stencil was a decorative insert for a Ball Mason jar and can be found at craft stores. You can see that you can use it for both a positive and negative outcome. You will also need a metal ruler or straight edge and a surface to work on. I used a square of marble; others used a glass cutting board.

Metal items to use as stencils: Ball Mason jar insert, metal drain cover, vintage drill bit measuring tool and draftsman's metal erasing shield.

Fibre layers ready for burning.

I can see this technique finding its way into future textile and mixed media projects.

Image Transfers

We played with Image Transfers earlier in 2013 but our session last Tuesday took our exploits to a frenetic level. There are so many interesting techniques available to fibre and mixed media artists today and I think that we tried them all.

To the uninitiated, try one technique at a time – you’re less likely to feel faint by the end of your session J Generally speaking Image Transfers can be categorized under a few headings:

• those that require images printed from an ink jet printer
• those that require images printed from a toner based laser printer or copier (coloured or black and white)
• images that need to be reversed prior to transferring the image to a substrate (especially if words are involved)
• images that require a medium of some sort to complete the transfer, for example a gel medium, acrylic paint, packing tape or solvent

The burning question for some of these techniques is “Why wouldn’t you just transfer the image directly to the fabric using the inkjet printer?” Our findings would conclude that, “It’s an effect that you are going for, i.e. vintage, distressed, ethereal etc.”

Top Left - Citrasolv™ onto crinoline
Top Right - TAP™ onto crinoline
Bottom Left - packing tape
Bottom Right - TAP™ onto distressed dryer sheet

For example, you could print that photo of Great Aunt Doll directly onto cotton muslin using your ink jet printer, sizing it the way you want and not have to reverse the photo before printing. Fabric is OK, but what if you could manipulate the photo digitally, reverse the photo and print the image on to Transfer Artist Paper™ (TAP), distress the TAP and then transfer the image to metal, wood or glass? The possibilities may leave you gob smacked!

CitraSolv™ Toner Based
Transfer to Linen

Image Transfer Techniques that we tried: Citrasolv™ (solvent based transfer with toner copies), packing tape or contact paper using magazine photos, ink jet printed transparencies, either direct to your surface fresh and wet from the printer OR onto the rough side of a transparency and let to dry. This transfer is then completed with spray hand sanitizer. We also tried, or had demonstrated, gel medium transfers to Textiva™, fabric and travertine tiles.

TAP™ onto painted Lutradur™

TAP™ – transfer artist paper is somewhat in a league of its own. Images can be put onto TAP™ with an ink jet printer, rubber stamps, Crayola™ wax crayons, Portfolio Water Soluble Oil Pastels™, pencil etc. 

Images are transferred using an iron and can be transferred to many substrates: fabric, paper, glass, wood, metal, mica, distressed dryer sheets, crinoline…just remember that you must reverse images or text.

Imagine the possibilities with a kid’s art class! 

Gel Medium transfer to Textiva™

One final word on any of these processes – make certain that you use your own images or ones that are guaranteed to be copy right or royalty free, especially if you are planning to sell your masterpieces!

TAP™ - Image drawn with Crayola Wax
Crayons™  and transferred to white cotton.

TAP™ - Image drawn with Portfolio Water Soluble
Oil Pastels™ and transferred to canvas.