Adding the Fun!

SO MANY choices of texture, color, thread, paper, silk, cotton, linen – the fun part when adding the surface layer on fabric collage is choosing the scraps for a particular piece. I like to dump out my scrap bin on the table and rummage through it to find some initial scraps that seem to relate to one another, either by contrasting or coordinating with one another. Then I start adding to the pile. In general, I don’t limit either thin or heavy weight fabrics – a variety is great in most work of this kind.

This scrap selection includes cotton, rayon, and wool challis. I wanted to emphasize pinks that coordinated with each other.

The two collages above include silk, polyester, commercial cotton, inkjet-printed cotton, and threads from upholstery fabric.

You will want to consider the fiber content. Many synthetic or silk fabrics require a lower iron temperature than some of your other fabrics. You have choices: eliminate those fabrics; add them but remember where they are and be very careful when fusing; or go to town and love the melting and distortions that might occur. You can always cover a blooper with another scrap.

Melted synthetic sheer on crinoline backing.

Above is some sheer polyester fabric included in my collage of an old stone building. I included it because I loved the pattern on that fabric. The iron was bit too hot for it, but it melted beautifully to expose the crinoline backing, enhancing the aged character I was looking for.

In addition to fabric, I sometimes include papers and threads. In the piece below, I used a page from an old book that I had stamped with pink flowers, yellow-green paper with stamped ginkgo leaves, and a piece of scanned hand-written text that was inkjet printed on cotton, along with a variety of cottons with interesting shapes.

The process of constructing fabric collage in this way is a real creative challenge with lots of latitude and a huge learning component.


Next time, I'll share some of the numerous ways I've used these fabric collages.





Posted by Cris Winters.

Fabric Collage: Supporting the Art(s)

Top to bottom: crinoline, canvas, heavy fabric

Beneath the beautiful colors, patterns, and surface are the supporting cast of fabric collage: the backings and the fusing materials. I almost always use one of three types of backings for my collage work - canvas, crinoline, or heavy fabric. My experience led me to the conclusions in this table.

BACKING TYPE	PROS	CONS
canvas	several weights, very stable, easy to find, relatively inexpensive	harder to sew with hand stitching
crinoline	translucent, light weight, easy to sew through with hand stitching, relatively inexpensive	harder to find, less stable
heavy fabric	easy to find, many color options, often free, ease for hand stitching varies	stability varies

Each backing type has it benefits and draw backs. If I plan to do lots of embroidery on a piece, I fuse it to crinoline. If I’m just going to frame the piece without edge stitching, it’s finished. But if I want to finish the edges with satin stitch, I might fuse it to canvas after I’ve finished the hand work for more stability. I tried fusible nonwoven stabilizer a few times and didn’t like the feel of the collage. It also seemed harder to do my hand embroidery on these pieces.

Crinoline over patterned fabric showing translucency

 

Back of piece with canvas backing

I have experimented with several types of fusible products. For larger pieces of fabric that don’t require hand stitching, I have used spray fabric adhesive with success. Normally, I use a paper-backed fusible, such as Wonder Under, because of the ease of not requiring another nonstick ironing sheet. I often apply the stabilizer to a larger piece of fabric than I might use immediately, so I have some prepared scraps on hand. One problem with this type of fusible is that on light weight fabric, the fusible can darken the right side and even show a slight pattern if it’s present on the fusible surface. Misty Fuse is best in such cases, and in general is a great all round good choice.

Next: my experiments with various fabric and paper choices in collage.

Posted by Cris Winters

Ta Dah!

So if you saw Wednesday's post, you know that I had a bag of about 30 tiny fabric collages to work on in the car. Was hand embroidery really going to do much for them? I just started in without overthinking , and soon I was loving the challenge of figuring out the right colors and combinations of stitches to make each little rectangle really pop.

 

 I finished embroidering all of them before our trip was half finished and started finding other things to embroider.  I was addicted by then!

The last section of my trip was the SAQA conference in Arlington, VA and I needed lots of business cards. Complications with internet service as we traveled prevented me from getting cards made via an online service. Instead I made a digital collage of the images of 2 dozen of the little collages I had made, printed them at a Kinko's, and cut them up. Fun cards - 24 different designs.

When I finally returned to my studio, I edge stitched each piece then satin stitched over that. The final step to prepare them for the art vending machine was to glue a piece of mat board with my personal information on it to the back of each tiny collage. I kept a few of my favorites and sent off the rest to be included in the vending machine at its 2014 summer home at the Wild Center in nearby Tupper Lake. Here are some of the completed collages.

Well, that's my story of the tiny collages for the art vending machine. But it's just the beginning of what I did with the pieces I kept and the collages that resulted. As the month proceeds, I'll have more posts about techniques, materials, and processes with fabric collage.

Posted by Cris Winters

The Best Part

 So, I had a couple of the fabric collages fused together. Next I began stitching over the surface of the collage with my machine. My goal was to secure the scraps where I had loose edges or fraying areas, as well as to provide some overall texture and color. I used lots of my fancy machine-generated stitches, especially in areas where they would be highlights. I reduced the foot pressure so I could easily make circular and loopy lines of stitching, in between straight stitching. Then I added some free motion stitching. Best to do that as a separate step, to avoid having to reset the feed dogs too often.

 

Straight, decorative, and free motion stitching

Finished collage sheet with fabric, decorative papers, book pages, and digitally printed fabrics

So, I had a couple of sheets of fabric scrap collage all stitched. The clock was ticking, my suitcase was nearly ready, my stops along the route were secured. By this time I had conceived of adding a bit of hand embroidery to the little pieces. I love to embroider in the car (especially if someone else is driving :-) and this was a great excuse to get going with it again

Travel embroidery kit - nice clear zippered sections. A repurposed toiletries travel bag.

 Almost time to leave!!! Back into my studio to get all this into a container for the trip. So, I flipped the collage sheets over, marked the correct dimensions for those little art machine boxes with a Sharpie, and started chopping.

Marking the back of the sheet and cutting

 When I collected all the little collages and turned them over, I was astonished! So many of the pieces were such lovely little compositions! I couldn't have done better if I had planned each one.

The whole collage sheet all chopped up.

I scooped up all the little pieces, dropped them into a zip lock bag, grabbed my embroidery kit, and hopped into the car with a sort-of-a-plan! See you again on Friday to conclude this particular tale.

Cris on Fabric Collage

Cris Winters here, with my first post of my guest month on the Fire Blog. I thought I’d tell you the story of a recent experience with fabric collage that changed my art practice, changed what I displayed and sold, and obsessed me for months! I’ll tell you more about myself as we travel through the month of June together looking at lots of fabric collage techniques and materials.

And another thing. I have a lot to learn, so if you want to add tips of your own to what I present, please pitch in and send your comments!

I’ve been doing fabric collage for a while. It was a natural progression from the paper and mixed media collage I did as my regular art practice for few years. Last spring, though, it became a Whole New Thing! I was asked to make a couple of dozen pieces of tiny art about 2 ¼” by 3 1/4 “ for our community’s Art Vending Machine – a refurbished cigarette machine that now dispenses art that fits inside little boxes just the size of a cigarette pack. Great fun!

But I was leaving on a very long car trip in a couple of days and the art was due a couple of days after I returned. Yikes!!! After my initial alarm, (instead of sensibly saying “NO!”) I went into hyper-creative mode doing what I love best: making art with serious constraints placed on it. This time the constraints were 1) small specific uniform size, 2) must be made in multiples of 12, 3) some way to do at least some of the work as I traveled, and 4) relatively short time frame.

I remembered reading several articles about using fabric scraps to make beautiful collage pieces, so I dug out a couple of those to refresh my memory on the basics. I had some medium weight canvas lying around, so I ironed some paper-backed fusible on it and got out my scrap box. (WARNING! Using fabric scraps in this way DOES NOT reduce the amount one already has. Instead, the scraps somehow breed in the closed container such that one has to continually find larger containers. I think the alchemy comes about when one feeds them all kinds of other bits and scraps that never seemed to have a purpose before.)

I proceeded by ironing the scraps I planned to use and arranging them on the fusible-covered canvas. My pieces of canvas were about 12” by 20” – that size was convenient to work with, especially as I did my machine stitching in a later step.

I assembled the collage on a Teflon sheet and transferred it to the ironing board by sliding a quilting ruler underneath and moving it carefully. Then I covered the whole collage with a second Teflon ironing sheet and pressed it all together. 

There were some inevitable gaps that revealed the backing, so I added fabric (and some paper) scraps that were already fusible-backed from other projects. I also added some scraps that added to the color, design, or general interest.

See what happened next in Wednesday's post!

rain delay - time to summarize

We're almost finished with this merry month of May deconstructed screen printing. A long post but lots of photos. I'm sure some of you are thinking ... "oh my goodness, Diane, so many steps, so many rules, so much preparation!  Why???"  Because with DSP or breakdown printing, the possibilities are endless, the personal interpretations can reveal your artistic voice and there's a surprise in every screen (with apologies to Cracker Jacks).  Not to mention, each original print can lead you to try beading, embroidery, or embellishment of all kinds.

Where will you get inspiration?  Anywhere there is texture, color and lines.  In other words - everywhere! Is this mystery photo below a deconstructed screen print?  Sure looks like one to me.  Keep reading to learn where the photo was taken.

Prepare the fabric
Soak cotton fabric for at least 30 minutes in a solution of nine tablespoons to one cup (recipes vary) to one gallon of water.  Wring out the soda water back into the bucket to reuse. Handwoven fabrics take longer to dry and seems like forever in 98% humidity. See the sky reflected in that puddle out there? That's my backyard and the waters have actually receded a lot. As long as you're looking, notice the last few gardenias on the bush on the left.  Still a heavy perfume in the air.

Don't iron your soda-soaked fabrics - they are likely to get scorched - and I am not risking the same by using the dryer.  Steady and slow.  That's me... :(

Not really!  I dug up some fabrics that had been stretched on a print board a couple of years ago and not used in a demo - so you know I have so many print boards that one can sit with unused fabric on it for years.

Prepare the screens
The dye on the screens has to be dry. I like to draw on the bottom side of the screen with thickened concentrated dye. At my house, it takes at least overnight for dye to dry on the screen.  You can speed it up with a hair dryer but be careful you don't blow it around and spoil your intended design.

 

Stretch the dry soda-soaked fabric on print boards
I use two layers of corrugated cardboard, covered in batting and protected by clear vinyl tablecloth.  All duct taped to the underside.  Short T-pins work well, pressed well down and out of the way of the screen.

This is a loosely woven cotton shawl about 30 inches wide and a couple of yards long.  I have it arranged on the board so that I can print a border on each end and the middle is folded up and protected against drips and splatters by a piece of cloth.

Pull the prints
I used clear print paste which is just the thickener and a plastic squeegee - an old credit card will work also.

The screen printed really well!  There was some left over fushia (maybe?) and some olive green that I had applied a couple of days ago.  The stripes magically aligned from one print to the other because I had been careful in planning it.  Or it was just dumb luck  You decide.

There was only enough dye on the screen for one border so I applied more dye to the back of the screen and have to wait while it dries to complete this project  It will only be a border print and probably I will have lots of backstaining over the entire shawl which really will not disappoint me.  A little more color will make it more interesting.

Batch the prints
While I am waiting for the added dye on the screen to dye, I have placed plastic over the first border so it can batch for at least 48 hours.  Because the second border will have to batch that long, the first border will be batching twice as long but in this case, more is better. Batching is just letting the wet dye sit on the cloth long enough to make a strong bond.

Wash out excess dye
One last step in the process.  Washing up.  A sometimes discouraging step.  You will lose some color.  No home dye formulation can be 100% perfect.  Printing lays down more dye than the fabric can chemically take up, so the excess has to be removed.  If you have vast areas of white fabric that is presoaked in soda, you may get some staining there, so the better choice is to avoid wide open white areas.  Cover your design with dye if you can.

First wash with cool water to remove the thickener and excess dye.  When you are bored with this step and the rinse water is mostly clear, begin to wash in very hot water with Synthapol or blue Dawn dishwashing soap.  The soap will help prevent the backstaining.  The hot water will loosen up the rest of the unused dye.  I usually get my electric kettle whistling with boiling water and pour into a bucket.  Add hot water from your faucet to bring the temperature down to about 140 degrees F.  Let your fabric soak with a little soap overnight.

Take a break, read your email, go for a walk. Washing out is not the fun part of this job.  Wring out and do another hot soak and washout.  If you still have color in the rinse water, keep doing the 140 degree F soak with soap.  I usually finish up with a small hot load (adding water from the whistling kettle, too) in the washing machine - assuming all the fabric is in a similar colorway to avoid cross backstaining.

Here's my washed-out, still slightly damp deconstructed screen printing on the borders of a handwoven scarf from Dharma. 

I was really pleased to find there was no backstaining in the center of the scarf.  I must be getting better at this dyeing thing.  :)

 Here's that mystery photo from the corner of the ladies room at Art Supply on Main. I love that they pulled up the old flooring and didn't bother to paint or refinish.  Or maybe they have by now, I'll have to drop in and check one of the these days. Judging by my stash of art supplies, I do not need to go shopping at an art supply store, but still, there could be something new to try ....

Hope you enjoyed this month of posts on deconstructed screen printing.  Writing up the May posts here got me excited all over again about printing.  Check out my blog for more current work and come back here for Fabric Collage with Cris Winters in June.

Diane
http://yarngoddess.wordpress.com

linking up with Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday

put on your mask and gloves, it's about to get messy

So... we've been looking at deconstructed screen printing this month.  First I showed you some finished work combining other fiber techniques with this dye process.  I've suggested trying unusual fabrics like handwovens and some examples of framing the finished work. I admit I was just trying to get you interested in the process!  Then I gave you some information on how I make screens and padded print boards.  Next you need some basic information on the dyes and the release paste. 

I like to use squeeze bottles with screw tops that don't get lost.  The dye is thickened but these tops have worked well and are a lot less messy that scooping out blobs of dye - fewer  spoons or spatulas to wash when I'm printing. I mix the dye paste in square tubs so that pouring it into the bottles doesn't require a funnel - just a steady hand.  You may prefer to use a funnel.  Once a tool is used for dye, DO NOT return it to your kitchen for use with food.  Mark the tool with paint or permanent marker that it is "for dyes only." 

The dye is MX Procion dyes.  You make a concentrated paste with water and urea to help it dissolve more easily.  I always use gloves and a sturdy face mask (with the metal strip that fits snugly on my nose) while the jar containing the powdered dye is open.  Once I have the lid back on and the dye powder is completely wet, the mask can be put aside.  I work in the sink with newspaper protecting the counter tops.  If any powder is spilled in the sink, it is easy to wash it away.  You can spritz the newspaper lightly with water and that will help control any dust that might float around. Work in an area where children and pets will not wander in and out.  I don't have a mask that fits my dog, Oscar, so he is banned from the room until the mixing is all done and cleaned up.  Once the dye is in solution, the dust is no longer a danger to anyone's lungs.  Label all dye containers carefully and store away from food and drink products.  More on safety and best practices can be found on Paula Burch's dyeing site as well as on the dye distributors' websites.

Here's Oscar hanging out while I mix up the dyes.  Look, he's smiling!

Okay, so once you have a concentrated paste of dye with water and urea, you need to add some thickener so that the dye doesn't just run through the screen.  Sodium alginate is used as a food additive, so if you want to mix the thickener in your blender you don't have to relegate it to the craft room tools but it can be hard on the blender.  I wouldn't mix the dye with thickener in the blender because that will make the blender a dyes-only utensil and anyway, it's a big pain to wash out after each color.  Lately I've been trying the sodium alginate that is called print paste and it seems to dissolve easier than the bag I bought a long time ago that was only labeled sodium alginate.  A little patience is necessary.  Mix your thickener up on the day before you mix your dye concentrates so that it is ready to go.  Follow the directions on the package but double the quantity of thickener to water so that it is extra thick. When you combine the thickener with the pasted dye, it will be thinned down a bit.  If it's still too thick you can add a few drops more water, but it really needs to be thick enough not to run through the screen. You want to be able to push it through the screen with a squeegee.  You can buy premixed thickener but it would probably only be thick enough to use as the release paste when printing not to thicken the dyes. 

This is getting too wordy. Break time!  Stand up and shake your body.  We've both been looking at this screen too long.

Check out this print I made using an embroidery hoop temporary screen.  I was auditioning  some threads for free motion quilting.  It seems I get a different prospective when I look at a photo on the screen than when I am looking directly at my cloth.  This is the fabric that is the background on my blog. It became the cover for a Japanese stab bound book that I swapped at a Book Arts Guild meeting a couple of years ago.

Did you get off the couch and take a stretch?  Good, me too.  We have our thickened dyes, we have some plain thickener (also called release paste), we have made screens, we have some padded print boards, a squeegee. Oh, yes, we need some fabric!

I use 100% cotton, prepared for dyeing (PFD), or my cotton handwoven cloth.  On the day you mix up your sodium alginate, you need to presoak the fabric in a solution of 9 tablespoons to a cup of soda ash (not baking soda or washing soda) dissolved in a gallon of water.  You can soak it for 30 minutes or overnight.  It needs to be dry before printing - don't iron it and don't put it in the dryer - so line drying is it.  Groan, more waiting. The soda ash solution can be saved and reused.  Just wring out the excess solution back into the bucket.  Add a couple more tablespoons of soda ash if you soak a lot of fabric.  The soda ash dissolves faster in very hot water than in cold.

On Friday, we print!  Are you ready?

Diane - yarngoddess