Swimming pool drains

I chose not to draw the gunk and bacteria lurking around this drain! Still creates an interesting pattern though. Much prefer the clean, germ free version!

Frosty fences

Switzerland provided lots of futuristic inspiration, a covering of snow completely changes how a boring wire fence looks.

Futuristic Rust

I'm hoping I can get to use some of the fabrics I rusted during the summer. 

A few happy days were spent smelling of vinegar after an inspiring workshop with Alice Fox.

Futuristic Colour Palatte

So after a little shopping trip yesterday, my colour palette seems to be developing.

I'm looking forward to using these beautiful cotton and rayon threads from Oliver Twists.

Cable cars

This is a drawing from one of my Switzerland photos. This is the mechanism from the cable cars. I kind of cheated though. To help me keep the proportions and perspective, I used Adobe Shape as a guide.

A really good app to play around with and its free, so i'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Futuristic Inspiration

So a week in Switzerland has given me lots of futuristic inspiration, too cold for sketching outside, but I have returned with lots of photographs.

Tomorrow feels like a good day for drawing.

Lino print, get some ink!

I love this piece. Again using the Geli plate.

I then used a Lino I had cut to print a conker design.

I chose to stitch the white conkers, but they looked very floaty so stitching between them anchored them.

However, lesson learned from this piece. Don't skimp on materials! I needed to mix block printing inks to match my palette, but was advised that mixing a tiny so lodge of my already mixed screenprinting inks with a bigger so lodge of PVA would work just as well and save me money.

I did save money, but gave poor results, the prints were almost translucent.

You get what you pay for!

Jungle Fever

A bit of an accidental final which was my tester piece.

This was produced early on in the printroom, but a couple of the prints didn't work too well so I decided to over print to find my angle. As I didn't feel too comfortable with my equipment and things weren't running too smoothly that day.

It was then stored in the pile and not really looked at again until my tutor gave me really positive comments about it, which made me look at it in a different light and not as the reject.

Once trimmed and mounted, U was able to see the positives in it.

Pleating

Apologies for the rubbish photograph.

This is another Geli Plate sample. Printing on Evolon which held the colour of the screen printing inks really well, keeping them lovely and vibrant.

I used a lino to print the conker silhouettes and pleated the fabric for more interest.

Evolon has a lovely suede feel to it, unfortunately the inks covered this. Maybe on this fabric using something like silk paints would help to preserve the soft feel.

Primary Source?

This was a tricky one.  How do you get a primary source for drawing when the theme is futuristic? Do I need to draw spaceships and high tech computer equipment?

Instead, and probably not as exciting, but a lot more accessible, I looked at buildings and structures.  Futuristic screamed linear and angular to me so I went with it.

Initially looking around the internal beams and frames at school.

I also noted, I chose cold colours, blues, greys blacks, maybe there is the start of a colour palette there.

Sequin rings

I am really enjoying playing around with the Geli Plate, best of all its relatively quick to clean up, which is always a bonus.

I have added some stitch and sequins to this sample. Layering the sequins to give them some lift.  I like the sample, I like that its an option and a bit of variation. However, Im not a sequin person and it took forever to stitch them.  There must be some kind of knack for speeding up the process and I certainly haven't figured it out yet!

Conkers

This was a really promising and simple piece, but I used the second batch of transfer paints so had mixed which didn't turn out very well, the colours were wishy washy and patchy.

I used Bondaweb to attach the conkers to the backing fabric.

The conkers were screenprinted onto brown velvet using screenprinting inks with a linear overlay of puffbunder. This is deceptive. It screens like see through paint and doesn't look as thou it has worked. But add a heat gun and a rising agent in the paint is activated, creating a raised interesting surface with a new dimension.

Soluable fabric

Soluble fabric looks like clingfilm albeit stronger and I can manage it better and don't end up tangled in it like I do with clingfilm.

I copied my flower design onto the soluble fabric with a sharpie. I made a mistake using a black sharpie, I would recommend using a lighter colour of what you will stitch, I'll make sure I remember this in future.

Secure the fabric into and embroidery hoop and free machine stitch the design.  Stitches have to be pretty dense to enable them to hold onto each other and create a solid fabric.  Not enough stitching and they'll just unravel. A criss cross design is best to enable you to remember where you have stitched, but it depends what your design lends itself to.

When you're sure there is enough stitch. Run your piece under the cold tap, the soluble fabric turns a bit jellyish and rinses away.  This is where the black sharpie was a mistake, as it coloured some of the threads making it a dirty pink in places. In this particular piece, although I rinsed most of the fabric away, a little left helps to hold the threads in place slightly stiffer.

Mono prints

I love the strong colours in this piece.

I used screenprinting inks, but used them on a Geli plate rather than a screen.

The top layer is then laid over a backing fabric and I machine stitched my conker design through the two pieces. I used a reverse appliqué technique or cut and slash to remove some sections.

I thought this piece was really successful, but my Geli plate is only A4 size, so it limits the size of the piece I can produce.

I need to find a big sheet of strengthened glass.

Screenprint and stitch

I'm pleased with how this has turned out!

I really love the stitched linear design on the screen printed silhouette.

I think I'm going to ditch either the pink or the purple though.  I haven't decided which one yet, but I don't think theres room in this colour palette for the both of them!

Snippets

You know all those spare threads that collect around the edge of your work area?

A backing fabric of marbled fabric is covered with these snippets. Some of mine were a bit long so I used my rotary cutter to slice back and forwards on them to trim them down a bit. I added in small pieces of wool top and sequins, spread them over the fabric and sprinkle some bonding powder in there too, overlay with a sheer voile.  Test a few colours as some act really strange with certain coloured backgrounds.  They are definitely sheer and then look completely opaque!  See which looks best for your background.

Cover with baking parchment and iron, the bonding powder will temporarily fix the fabrics together while you machine stitch in place.

The rotary cutter is handy if you don't have bonding powder. Just finely chop some Bondaweb.

Transfer Paint

I tested out transfer paints on the usual white cotton and synthetics. Then I had what I thought was a genius moment.

I remembered I had white cotton in the depths of one of my yarn boxes and wondered how the transfer paints would work on a knitted piece.

First I painted plain white paper and laid it in a plaid type design. Then knit a square with the White cotton yard.

Using the heat press, I pressed the two together and the colour did exactly what it said in the tin and transferred the colour to the yarn.

It was a perfect result. I loved it. I also loved moving the fabric as the areas where the yarn wasn't in contact with the paper remained white, creating great areas of interest if it was used for a garment.

So, excited by this, I decided to create a larger sample to use as one of my final pieces.

I began knitting a larger piece.

The ball of yarn was coming to an end.

I returned to my boxes of yarns, I was sure I had another couple of balls of the white cotton...

Another lesson learned. I had to make another trip to a couple of yarn stores, no one had the White cotton I had used so I had to discard the larger sample and begin again with a white cotton/synthetic mix.

Lesson number two, mix enough transfer paint for your whole project! I really struggled to colour match the second time. The first time was so easy to achieve the colours I wanted! 

The final result was not anywhere near as good as the sample. The colours were almost fluorescent. There were lighter and darker patches transferred from the painted paper and in the past couple of months, the colours have faded vastly.

Quilting and reverse appliqué

This sample was remade into one of my final pieces, but I actually prefer the original sample!

I used a dense felt which gave the piece quite a high loft. I also like the very dark background felt, it helps give the piece a lot more depth.

I really love the sketchy machine stitching though, it works really well with the linear screen print.

Free machine stitch

Im trying to get used to free machine stitching on a sewing machine that isn't mine! Its strange but we all seem to be very attached to our own machines.  Its funny how in tune you get with your own, knowing exactly what speed to run it at and where its quirks are.

Im going to try out some sketching with my machine stitching. Ive seen a few examples around and I really like the over stitching look of them.

Watercolour progress

I haven't painted much in the past, I always shy away from it in favour of a reliable pencil that I can control!

I have been advised to check out some Youtube videos and try the wet on wet technique. Which I have and its so simple and obvious!! My results are much better, I actually really enjoyed working on this piece and felt much more in control of the results

Hand stitch and beading

Ugh! Beading takes forever!! I keep dropping them, there must be a way of doing this that I haven't been told about!

I like the sparse stitching on this screen print though, it has turned out well.