Better Late than Never Right?

I know I'm coming a bit late to the party with this one but since it uses two things taught on this blog recently, I just wanted to share what I made using those bits.

Recently I came across the phrase "Intuitive Design". Don't know what it means to anyone else but I chose to just take a piece and see where it lead me.  The background is on a small piece of silk velvet dyed purple (or painted - I'm not sure as it was a gift). Then I just started grabbing things and auditioning them and moving them until I liked it.  No pre-set plan or goal...just fun. Only thing I knew was that I wanted to play with some Extreme Texture!

I had done some of the 3-D polyester using the technique posted by Nienke in October
(link: http://andthenwesetitonfire.blogspot.com/2012/10/3d-shibori-on-polyester.html)
It was great and I loved the effect but just couldn't think of anything to do with my greenish-bronze polyester.

Then there were some very organically made beads in Beth Berman's posts on Embellishments.
(link:    http://andthenwesetitonfire.blogspot.com/2013/01/bead-organization-and-other-elements.html )
I had some painted Tyvek hanging around, got out my heat gun and went to work.

Finally, I combined all these ingredients (and a few more) and came up with Sour Grapes

Sour Grapes

So as I look forward to a lot more inspiration on this blog and having lots more experiments to play with, I think my version of Intuitive Design will be happening again!

embellishments

Hello.  I’m a new member of the fire blog.  (Yes, the third Beth, and thus Beth #3.)

I don’t have any finished embellished work to show you, but I wanted to share some thoughts and some of the playing around I am doing.  Maybe it will give you some jumping off ideas.

I really enjoyed Quilter Beth’s series of detailed tutorials this month.  As a jewelry crafter, and bead hoarder, my initial thoughts were along the lines of: piece of cake, and I’ve got this one nailed.  Pride goeth... well, you know.  I did blithely stitch beads onto a fabric project that was underway (above).  I went to bed happy, looked at it the next day.  Ugh!  And ripped every bead off.  My first lesson learned--you can’t just DO this.  It has to be called for.  It has to enhance without overpowering.  It has to be the perfect touch.  A little goes a long way.  

So I am very happy to have the bead embellishment techniques to add to my bag of tricks.  And sometime it will be just what is called for.  One of my main hang-ups was a quality of texture.  Adding touches to cloth with embroidery thread feels very intuitive to me.  Glass or stone beads added to a fabric piece are hard on soft.  They reflect light very differently.  On some project that is going to be just the touch needed.  Where I was trying to add beads was not that place.

Below is the piece I tried to add the beads to.  What I loved about this piece was the movement of the lines.  Somehow that got lost with the distraction of the beads.  I’m trying French knots instead (as seen below.)  I’m still not sure about it, but at least it is moving along the lines again.

I’ve also been doing some stitching on pieces of denim from old discarded jeans and playing with a round form, moon-like.  Below, I used the circle in a negative space and added white matte seed beads.  I thought this had potential as an effective way to use beads.

Below is a close-up section of the piece I was doing as I was exploring extreme texture.  I sort of couched (or attached) a length of scrunched up, hand-dyed, twill tape with French knots (also, some other couching appears beneath that.) 

More couching

Below are two beaded brooches I made a long time ago.  The centerpieces are buttons.  A string of beads has been couched around each button.  Once the string of beads has been couched in place, you can go back through the strand of beads with your needle and beading thread several more times to secure it.  From there more beads can be added that are not stitched to the ground cloth.  The brooches were stitched onto ultra-suede, but a similar technique could be used on fabric.

Below is an idea I was trying of adding stitches to a commercially patterned fabric.  (Couching, running stitch and fly stitch.) 

I also wanted to share some couching stitch I did on a learning sampler.  I love how this looks and can definitely see using something like this somewhere.  Here the couched thread is a glossy rayon yarn held in place by yellow embroidery floss.

I love seeing how others have used these techniques successfully.  And when that perfect project presents itself--I do have a bead or two to add to it!

Extreme Texture--Quilter Beth

I have really enjoyed working with Judith's technique of the month--extreme texture. As I stated earlier, I started with a piece of fabric approximately 17" X 28". I put the hand-dyed gauze on top of the hand-dyed fabric and added the little stuffed balls first. (I like the added texture of the gauze.)

I have to apologize for the different colors that show up in these pictures. Some were taken during the daytime (when I had good light) and some were taken at night in much lower light. The last picture is the closest to the true colors of the piece.

Next, I ironed wrinkles into the fabric and pinned them down.

I looked through my threads and thought I'd free-motion quilt the piece with a pearlescent thread--BIG MISTAKE! I HATED the way it looked.

The above picture is a close up. That pearlescent thread just looked "nasty," so I had to rip it out--not fun.

I ended up using a purple thread on the blue fabric (which didn't show up as much and that I liked MUCH better) and quilted a spikey design. I used a yellow green on the dyed cheesecloth and quilted circles onto it. In the following picture, I have also added cording underneath the fabric.

Then, I started adding some handwork. I added yellow green yoyos and put a sequin and bead in the center of each one along with some embroidery over the top, a black washer embroidered with a buttonhole stitch with a sequin and a bead added to the center, and some plastic gutter guard from Home Depot (I used the grid of the gutter guard to keep lines of embroidered running stitches straight.). The green "dots" on the blue background are French knots, I embroidered around the inside of each circle, and I couched down sari yarn which I ran from each "little puff" (as Judith calls them). When I was deciding where to couch the sari yarn, I thought about how each little puff was isolated; I wanted to connect them. I thought about how we all are connected in some way--six degrees of separation.

You may notice some reddish "dots" on the lower left-hand side; I'm beginning to add some beads. I plan on adding many more over the entire piece. I'm also planning on adding some bead stacks on the "little puffs." I already have the beads picked out. I don't think I'll get that finished before the month is up, though, so I thought I'd go ahead and post.

Posted with Blogsy

My Experiment with Extreme Texture

 I finally got some time this week to play with Judith’s techniques for Extreme Texture.  I confess I didn’t have any idea of what I would do other than try the different methods she described.

First off, I auditioned several pieces of fabric I had in my stash.  I finally settled on this one:

This was a good size, and it had some interesting patterns… kind of reminds me of being under water.

Next, I did some of the puffs:

 

After creating several of them, I could see where scrunching was going to make the piece even more interesting:

I scrunched, then pressed the piece.  Then I cut the batting and pinned the fabric to hold the scrunches in place.  Next was the stitching:

I used white thread, which doesn’t show up as well as I would like, but I have some ideas about what to do later to enhance the stitching.  From the very first puff I stitched around, I envisioned dancing jellyfish or sea anemones, so the working title is “Dance of the Jellyfish”!  I’ll see if my finished piece looks like what I have in mind.

Once I finished stitching around the puffs, I set to thinking about how I wanted to use cord.  My vision is to have seaweed floating somewhere in the composition.  I dug through my stash and found some cheesecloth and cotton cord, and tried dyeing them.  However, I think I got a little impatient and rinsed them too soon.  The cord came out very pale, and the cheesecloth came out more blue than green.  So I switched gears:  dark green netting and undyed cord that I zigzagged in place:

 

 Here’s the cord – I zigzagged twice – once to anchor the cord, the next time to cover more thoroughly with a closer stitch.  

 

Next, I ripped some pieces of the netting, pressed them into clumps, and hand stitched to anchor them onto the piece around the ‘stem’ created by the cord:

I have lots more I need to do to this piece before I’ll call it ‘done’, but I wanted to share what I have completed so far.  More to come!

Texture to "Finish" a Piece

I made this little art quilt from paint, Mul-tex, thread and batting.  But it was missing something.  It has texture from the gel medium and the threads, but it's still a little blah.


Enter Extreme Texture Technique!  I took some of my hand-dyed cheesecloth and wadded it up and draped it across the bottom.  Then I used my walking foot and a zigzag stitch to stitch it down.

I left some of it hanging over the binding.  Much better!

Extreme Texture

Extreme Texture

 15 inches  by 11 inches

Hand dyed fabric, cotton and polyester cording, hand dyed embroidery thread, variegated cotton thread, polyester batting

The above picture does not do justice to the texture so a few detail shots.

Tutorial starts tomorrow.   See you then!