My Spoonflower Addiction

As digital fabric printing becomes more prevalent, fabric users have even more choices for printing their own without resorting to the vagaries of their home printers. The latest SAQA Journal has a good comparison by the Pixeladies of fabric printing services. In the future I may try some of the services reviewed, but for now I’m sticking with Spoonflower as I know their interface and have been satisfied with their work. And it doesn’t hurt that they’ve been running 20% off sales.

I’ve turned to photos printed on fabric as a way to continue creating now that intense piecing is literally painful for me. I aspire to create work like the one below, but I’ve a ways to go.

“Union Station” Jill Kerttula

Jill Kerttula uses fabric printed photographs as a starting point for her work. Her blog entry about “6 of Chaos”shows her process. You can see more of her work on her website.

From my latest fabric order I created “Corrugated,” which uses four fat quarters of Photoshop edited versions of a photo my friend Penny took. I’ve inset narrow strips of varying widths to spice up the palette.

“Corrugated” detail

I don’t know if I’ll add more embellishment or quilt it as is. Any opinions are welcome.

Inspiration for how to deal with another fabric from the same order has been slow in coming. This is another photo from Penny that I played with in Photoshop. I want to emphasize the gritty textures, and may add some of the fabric I painted for my Tansy Hargan class.

Just in case you wondered, I’ve never had any flower photos printed for me, though I’ve used photos of trees.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Friday.

Endless Scraps

Each week I toss out a few fabric scraps to reduce my collection. Most of my recent pieces are made almost entirely of scraps. Over the past two weeks I’ve put together three tops made of scraps and slapped fabric for another onto my design wall. Result? The scraps are winning. My color sorted boxes of scraps never seem to get emptier even though I’m not adding many new bits because I use mostly scraps. I suspect there’s a secret spell that transfers other quilters’ scraps to my boxes.

But I push on to use up those scraps. I decided each of my latest scrap creations must contain nothing but scraps (duh!), blocks sewn from scraps (I have a collection,) and photos printed on fabric. I also decided to use some techniques I learned in my From Sketchbook to Wall class.

Since it’s spring, allegedly, I began with pink and purple scraps and a highly distorted photo of begonia leaves. I fused the scraps onto acrylic felt and sewed around the raw edges. Then, I began to applique and embroider a la Tansy Hargan. I plan to embellish more once I figure out what to add.

Next, I moved to blues, purples, and grays and a more tailored look. The photo I used is left over from my shoes quilt. I fused the raw edge scraps to drill cloth and again sewed down the edges. There will be no hand work as that drill cloth is tough stuff. I went through way too many versions of the layout and have reached the point of declaring it done simply because I’m tired of it.

Next steps are up in the air, possibly stenciling or some other form of printing.

For a change I decided to sew my scraps together on the third piece and got into improv curved piecing. I was glad I remembered how to do the technique. The photo of spools of yarn was cut into four pieces which were scattered about.

This piece will actually have batting and backing, unlike the others.

Finally, I began to select scraps in the green and blue/green family for one or more pieces. Right now there’s no particular order to the scraps, though I think I may build circles with that one print fabric on the upper left. I wish I could tell you that deep thought goes into much of my work, but it would be a lie. Often I simply respond to colors.

And speaking of colors, I had to photograph this view of my house. My green house seems right for Earth Day.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Friday.

A Bit of This, A Bit of That

In between lengthier projects I often do mini pieces that may not always involve quilting. Sometimes they are inspired by something I saw or read; sometimes by gifts or supplies from my stash that I have rediscovered. Most recently I used a sunny painted ocean scene given to me by Ann Scott to make a more disturbing landscape than the original. I call it “A Cell With A View.”

I cut up the original and combined it with a printed photograph. Then I quilted it to resemble chain link fencing covered with the stems of weeds. The edges are finished with paint and yarn.

A more abstract yet functional project was two fabric bowls made from scraps and canvas I had painted. I was tired of seeing the canvas hanging in my fabric closet. Hilde Morin’s instructions call for covering the canvas with fabric, but I streamlined the process by decorating the canvas directly.

Inside of bowls

Outside of bowls. The fabric strips are to cover the zigzagged seam lines.

Some of my incidental projects are made from paper as well as fabric.

After I rolled off excess paint from printing onto grocery bags I cut up the bags and sewed them to wallpaper samples. The samples are vinyl, and so far have proved impervious to permanent impressions by any paint or marker I own.

More monoprinted papers from Penny got sewn onto a canvas strip that used to be a blank fabric book.

Finally, a photo I took at a local lake was edited in Photoshop, and printed on fabric. I glued it with matte medium to a stretched canvas. The technique is from Lynda Heines.

I painted the canvas edges black before gluing on the photo. The green is my cutting mat.

There are still more little projects on the go in my studio, though a few may be returned to the “someday” drawer. I won’t even begin to talk about the week I spent sewing little scraps into larger scraps by color, though I am using a few in current work.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Friday.

More Painted Textile Pieces

Since last week I’ve continued to work on my small (about 10 inch square) pieces for my From Sketchbook to Wall class, and have five done (mostly.) I’ve learned that it’s hard to hand sew through fabric covered with acrylic paint, and that I want to hold onto some resemblance to my inspiration landscape. That surprised me as I think I’ve reached a fairly high comfort level with abstraction.

Original photo of riprap along towpath with the Cuyahoga River at the top

My interpretation of photo. I used offcuts from a photo I had printed on fabric for the tree groups.

A fading bouquet left on a bench by the scenic railroad stop. I’ve seen flowers left on the bench several times, so I think it must be a memorial tribute to someone.

Hmm, I think it looks like there’s a hint of the railroad tracks in it as well as the bench slats.

Fuzzy photo of first new growth

I decided to hurry along the greening up, and also added needle felted leaves. I don’t like my stitching on them as it’s too folk arty.

I did like that riprap.

I may still go over the white lines with stitching.

I loved the textures and acid yellow green stuff.

I kept the yellow green but decided to think pink. The base is a mended patch from an old tablecloth.

While I love the texture hand stitching gives, in the future I think I’ll use paint and its cousins more to transform the base fabrics. I have lots of painted fabric left for more such textile works, though I think I want to try to create fantasy landscapes next time.

Leftover fabrics fused to base

I have lots of photos for inspiration, but I want to use them mostly as inspiration for textures. I like the rough arrangements I did of my painted fabrics better than my deliberately composed ones.

If you’re on Instagram and want to see other people’s work from this class, search #tansyhargantextilecourse.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Friday.

A Different Kind of Textile Class

I’m in the middle of a two week online class on textile creation given by Tansy Hargan, a British landscape architect and textile artist. It’s called From Sketchbook to Wall, which is an accurate description. We began with en plein air sketches of nature or built environments, moved on to thumbnail collages of the sketches, and then to transformation of clothing to fabrics for our final pieces.

Collaged thumbnails. All but one image based on outdoor sketches.

I signed up for the course to get a different approach to textile art, and I’m getting different with a vengeance. We were to unpick old clothes with a seam ripper, paint them with acrylic until stiff, and add marks to our fabrics in a variety of ways.

Unpicking old clothes palled quickly, and I used men’s shirts I had already cut up plus remnants from my hoard. I combined textile and acrylic paints to use what was on hand, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around deliberately making my fabric stiff. All my past effort to preserve a soft hand in painted fabric made me cringe at the paper like results, but the advantage of that stiffness became apparent later during mark making. Some of the techniques were new to me and possible only because the fabric was stiff. Tansy demoed a variety of ways to mark fabric, including photocopying (stiffness is essential) and carbon paper. I wasn’t brave enough to run sheets of fabric through my brand new printer, but other students did that successfully.

I used dressmaker tracing paper that’s at least 60 years old.

Then it was on to reverse applique, hand stitching, and free motion stitching. Again, this is roughly done and fraying is encouraged.

Rough reverse applique

I’m now at the point of actually composing and fusing the base layer of my 9 inch squares on top of old cotton sheeting covered with WonderUnder. We are to rip/cut our fabrics and arrange them on the fusible surface, inspired by our thumbnail collages.

I learned that the olive strips are polyester after they stuck to my iron.

I think sewing through that denim will be a challenge.

I am saving the last two videos about stitching and further layering until I make more base layers. I suspect I’m overthinking the fabric arrangements, but it’s quite fiddly to get the little bits to stay put as you fuse them. After my ironing disaster I’ve made sure to use a silicone mat.

I’m linking to Off The Wall Fridays.