Fugitive Media

Finally, I've had some time to try out this technique! I used some regular pastels on white fabric, just drawing some flowers out in various colors. Then I painted the whole piece a very light lavender using Pebeo Setacolor paint, covered it with textile medium using a screen, and quilted some outlines in black. Here's a picture from late last night when I finally had to put it away and go to bed:

More flowers. It was a lot easier to draw the flowers out first, then sew around them. The textile medium I used seemed to create almost a laminate type of fabric. Definitely gave my sewing machine needle a workout--I want to wash the piece to see if it softens up a bit.

And here's another piece I painted some flowers on with setacolors in pink & yellow, then drew the leaves in with pastels. I learned that the setacolors are pretty transparent and the pastels aren't, as you can see in the leaf on the right side.

I took the textile medium and applied only to the green parts with a brush, then heat set the piece with my iron and threw it all in the washing machine. No fading or anything following the wash.

Finally, this last piece was from the challenge we had recently--there was too much white on it when I got it back, so I decided to color in the white lines with a blue pastel crayon. It actually looks purple in this picture, which makes me thing I might want to color it over in purple.

I screened the textile medium on this, too, and washed it, but it still feels kind of stiff. I just got a cheap medium at Joann's or Michael's, if someone is using a better one that doesn't stiffen up the fabric, could you tell me which one I should try?

Screen Printing--A Bit of Success and Dismal Failure/Quilter Beth

I did get a little screen printing practice and thought I'd share those results with you. First I screen printed using paint and a freezer stencil. Those results weren't bad. I cut the stencil from freezer paper and ironed it to the screen. Jane Dunnewold suggests ironing from the front (not the flat side) of the screen. I tried that, but I kept running into my duct tape (which wanted to melt when the iron touched it). I ended up ironing from both sides. I definitely got better contact between the screen and the freezer paper when I did it Jane's way. I wasn't very careful when I cut the stencil and made it a bit too big for this screen. Oooops!

This is a view of the freezer paper stencil from the back of the screen.

Here is what it looked like when I was getting ready to add the ink to the well. 

Here is the result. I added some blue to the red paint on the last print. 

Here is a close up. 

I thought these turned out okay, and it is pretty easy to do.

Now for the dismal failure...I thought I'd try something different. I colored a picture on my fabric using pastels (Alphacolor by Weber Costello) for the background along with watercolor pencils (Karat Aquarell by Staedtler) and watersoluble ink pencils (Inktense by Kerwent). I tried binding that to the fabric using ProChem's base extender (PROfab Textile Paint).

Here is what it looked like after coloring.

Here is what it looked like after screening the base extender over it. 

 Here is what it looked like after washing! (The light was different when I took the picture, but I think you get the idea.) You can see the area at the bottom left where I didn't screen enough extender on to save any of the color at all.

Next, I colored directly onto the screen with the pastels and screened the base extender onto the fabric (hoping to bind the color to the fabric). This is what it looked like after the base extender had been screened over it.

This is what it looked like after washing! I know, I know, you think I took a picture of an untreated piece of fabric...NO...this is actually what it looked like. Now there are a number of reasons this little experiment could have failed.

It could be that I didn't use enough extender. The way it was, though, the fabric is a bit stiff. I'm not sure I would like the hand of the fabric if more extender is what it would take to keep the color. It could be that the fabric was just to crappy. I used an inexpensive muslin to practice on. If the pastels were oil-based pastels rather than water-based, that could cause the problem. (The pastels box didn't say whether they were oil or water-based, but I'm thinking because of the way the dust came off of the screen after I colored on it they were water-based.)

Hopefully, I'll have time to try some more screening before the month is up. I'm planning on making a quilt that will have words screened over it. I want to use flour paste on the screen to do that. (I tried that when I was in Jane Dunnewold's class. The words come out nicely when etched from the right side of the frame with a wooden skewer.) If I don't have time this month to get that done, I'll post pics of it whenever it happens.