Mixed Media Explorations

Over the past few weeks, I have been playing with mixed media.  Mixed |Media techniques have always been a part of my work as an art quilter, but now I am able to view the whole thing as a continuum, from pure textile work such as hand embroidery, through quilt making onto painting fabric, adding embellishments and working into doing exactly the same things on paper, board, and canvas, slowly progressing to the point of using pure paint.  I have been very surprised to find that artists who have begun their journey at the other end of the continuum as just as fascinated with the mixed media techniques as we fibre people.

Being sure that I was entering the field of mixed media as a neophyte, my first step--of course--was to sign up for a class.  While waiting for class day, I ended up in a discussion, with a group of painters, about--of all things--artists trading cards (ATC's).  This lead to the realization that I probably have more experience than most of them with mixed media techniques.  Then came class day where the techniques were much closer to painting than fibre, along the continuum.  But I still knew enough to feel quite comfortable amongst the group of painters.

This has been a major epiphany for me.  I really don't need to feel like a poor relation when I associate with other artists.  I have something to contribute!

The end result is that I have been asked to lead a "Play Day" in Mixed Media Techniques.  Several of the people who have signed up for this are artists whose work I have admired for years.  Boy!  I better get my act together in a hurry!!

Back to normal--sort of.....

In April, when I was working on FMQ'g,  two problems came up with my Horizon 7700.  First of all, somehow (??), the Titanium needle hit my open-toed free motion foot and bent it right out of shape,  bent but didn't break the needle as well.  Scared the heck out of me and , not taking any chances, I took the machine into the shop.  Talking to the fellow, I mentioned another problem I had been having with a "grating" noise after the machine gets warmed up.  Checking it out, he determined that a spring, which controls the bar that maintains the position of the bobbin holder, was missing.  This very tiny spring was nowhere to be found, which meant there was no part number, and it took a while for  him to determine that there wasn't one available in North America.  Finally, after almost two months, the part came in and I got my machine back on Wednesday.

 I had some prep. work to do before I could set it up and check the FMQ'g, which I started to do this morning.  Discovered that in all the fuss about the missing spring, we hadn't arranged to replace the badly bent FMQ'g foot.  When I called about it, I was told that the open-toed foot is not a normal part, and only available as part of the machine purchase package, but they would have to try to order one from the factory, but couldn't guarantee that they would be able to get one. ( ?Another two months for a maybe??)  Checking somewhere, she found that it is sold only as part of a four piece FMQ'g package, priced at $62.00+tax.

Now, I have been FMQ'g for many, many years.  I taught myself on a very old flat-deck Kenmore.  Always, I have coveted the open-toed FMQ'g foot, but it has never been available, to me, until I received one as part of the package when I bought the 7700.  For thread painting and the very detailed whole-cloth FMQ'g I do, I consider it essential. I bought the damn thing.  Thank Goodness for plastic money.

Finished

Here it is, and I am pleased, not because I think it's great art, but because I finally think I'm finding my groove again.

It has been a couple of years since I last attempted a Tyvek piece, and almost as long since I did any serious beading.  This piece also uses hand painted fabric, which was the first fabric painting in almost a year.  The cabochon is a piece of fused glass that I had originally commissioned from a local glass worker, June Derksen, for another piece.  That piece is still around but has suffered some problems and has been re-purposed, to a certain extent.  I'm not really sure how it will end up.  But the cabochon works quite nicely here.  This piece will be mounted and framed in a dark wooden frame-not yet finished.

I am so very glad this turned out so well.

Another Tyvek piece

This month the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge involves the use of the colour purple.  The first thing I attempted went South quite quickly, so I had to find another idea.  Since I may be teaching a Tyvek technique fairly soon, I decided to use Tyvek, to refresh my skills.

First step was to alter the Tyvek with heat, and then paint, both the fabric and altered of altered Tyvek.

Tyvek was a mailing envelope that I cut open and cut off any areas where there was more than one layer.  There was some printing on it but I made that the wrong side without any problems.  People seem pretty well evenly divided about whether to paint first or alter first.  I alter first and do so with an embellishing gun.  This gives me more control, but uses enough heat (350 degrees F) that the job is done in a fair period of time.  A heat gun at either low( 250 degrees) or high  (450 degrees) is either too slow or too fast.  An iron does the job very quickly and is almost impossible to control as you cannot see what is happening under the iron.  It also flattens the "bumps", something I don't want.

The fabric was painted with Parma Purple Seta-Color Fabric paint.  Since I wanted an analogous color scheme I used the purple, plus the same brand of paint in both Fuschia and Cobalt Blue for the Tyvek, all three very watered down so that the paint would flow nicely over the "bumps" of the Tyvek.  As the Tyvek dried, I used a sort of dry brush technique to add Lumiere True Gold.  I had tried a bit of Lumiere Halo Purple and Lumiere Turquoise pearl as well but just around the edge and wasn't happy with either.

As you can see the fabric dried with  both light and dark areas.  When I turned it over it, the colour was much darker but showed a bunch of parallel lines from the Coroplast I used to dry it on.  I sort of liked that and it became the right side.  This gave me an idea of how to quilt the background of the piece, as well.  The True Gold on the Tyvek was too strong for me, and the Halo purple stunning, so this morning, with the piece completely dry, I went over all of the True Gold with the Halo gold.  Much better.

Then to start thinking about beads.  I had several pieces of fused glass, that I had commissioned from a local glass worker, June Derksen.  They had been for another piece that did not work out at all, but the shape and colour worked well for this.  Yes, they are a very deep purple.  

I selected the one on the right for this piece.  By this afternoon, the background had been quilted in parallel lines, and the Tyvek had been shaped and applied to the background.  The fused glass attached to the background, and large selection of other beads assembled for attaching by hand. Guess I better get to work, as I'm supposed to post a picture to the Challenge site by May 31st.

Meanwhile--

while all of the dyeing mentioned in the last two posts has been batching, I have been working on a small wall hanging.  My original vision was of a pieced background in burgundy and dark green (very low value difference), with gold hand embroidery on the front.  Well, by the time I had sorted out all of the fabric and played with the colour and value, the piece ended up in peaches and celery.

 And a close-up below which better shows the subtle colour variation in the pieced areas.

There is still a good variety of the fabrics I bought to work with in my original design, and my mind is suggesting that this may be the beginning of a series devoted to spirals and maybe triple spirals.  Although, the spirals in this were a bugger to make and applique.  Still it would be a technical challenge, and I maybe need one of those right now.

One more piece of dyeing

After the previous dyeing, I managed one more piece, but not without problems.  This is a huge piece of fabric,  I have had to fold it in half to get it on the flannel wall for the picture.  I started with a LWI bath using burgundy and brick Procion MX dyes.  The result was a pale orange with lots of white areas and a few darker spots, which I didn't like, so I used a normal dye bath of brick, with a higher concentration of dye.  this covered the white spots but still left the piece much lighter than I wanted.  I am usually pretty cheap with the dye, so I made a high concentration of burgundy dye and put it though another dye bath, letting it batch for almost 36 hours.  Here are both sides of the piece.  Not as dark as I would have liked, and not usable for the design I had in mind.  So I guess I'll have to come up with a different design.

The muse is stirring----

Must be spring.  I am starting to get some ideas.  And- I'm slowly finding the ambition to do something about them.

I've wanted to do something to serve as a memory of my trip to Cuba last March, but not something traditional or similar to any other memory of Cuba.  I have an idea, but it needed a special fabric, one that was without any realistic shape or form.  This meant that it would have to be hand dyed.  So using a Low Water Immersion (LWI) technique I actually started a dye bath--the first one in months.

I am quite pleased with the result and finished with enough fabric for the front, back, and binding of a nice size wall hanging.  I chose a deep yellow and medium blue for the dye.  My hope was that I would end up with some yellow to represent the sun, blue to represent the water and sky, and green to represent the glorious foliage.

At first I thought this might be a little dark for what I have in mind, so tried another dye bath of deep yellow and brick.  Nope, not what I wanted at all, and it was too small for more than maybe the front and binding.

But the funny thing about dye baths is that one always leads to another, so I did two more.  Staying with the brick coloured dye, I wanted to find out what the result would be if I used both brick and slate blue.

I am well pleased with this piece as well, although the brick colour, despite being added to the dye bath first, has all but disappeared during the dyeing process.

So there had to be a fourth dye bath, this time with brick and dark green.  Now these two dyes are close enough that one has to worry about complements cancelling each other out and ending up with mud. But happily this was minimal, although the brick was very much muted.  I think this may be my favourite of them all.

My process was fairly relaxed.  I try to never get too obsessive about my dyeing, preferring to be challenged by serendipity.  This may be why my favourite process is LWI.  For the first time, I soaked my fabric in soda ash before hand, and added it to the vessel wet.  Many years ago, when I took my first dyeing course, we were taught to immerse the dry fabric in the dye and then add the soda ash--dissolved in hot water-- about 20 minutes later.  I don't think the different process made any difference to the final result, although there may be fewer sharp edges to the colour changes with using wet fabric.  

Yep, gonna do some more!