More wallhanging

It's a bit of a coincidence, but I've been to a workshop today to learn about the techniques for making, embellishing and fabric painting a wallhanging. The workshop was run by a new Craft shop in my home town and I had a whale of a time. (Their website is still in its infancy so please look back later). I learned about foundation piecing, "stitch and flip", stitching "in the ditch", soluble stabilisers, making a twisted cord edging and loads beside. Some of these terms I had heard while blogging but didn't know what they meant - now I know! It's amazing how complicated something seems until you learn the terminology. All of a sudden you realise you don't have to be worried about tackling something, it's actually fairly straightworward.

26 August 2008 photo deleted as I had not obtained Tutor's permission for which I apologise.

Above you can see that we pieced the background onto a pre-drawn grid (which for ease we had traced onto "golden paper"*,a type of tissue paper). Apart from the first piece which was stitched on without a seam so that there could be a lightly frayed edge (have a look at the last photo), all the pieces were stitched on with a seam allowance, right sides together and then flipped up. While the pieces were assembled on top of the tissue the machining was done from the tissue side so that you could see where to sew. Unfortunately we were so busy that I didn't get to photograph each stage.

26 August 2008 photo deleted as I had not obtained Tutor's permission for which I apologise.

This is the front of the piece after the layers have all been stitched together. The quilt batting and backing fabrics were then cut about an inch larger all round to allow a margin for eror. I think that at this point an invisible thread was machined along each line of existing stitching, known as stitch in the ditch. This secures the layers together. (I think this is the right order. I was so busy I didn't get it written down at the time).

As this was to be a beach landscape we drew beach huts onto water soluble stabiliser and then machined these onto the beach section. After the main outline was machined the stabiliser was washed away with a cotton bud and water. Once dry the planking was machined on.

The next step was to paint the eaves and the beach hut itself with fabric paint, in this case, Setacolour Opaque. You can use acrylic paint if you don't have fabric paints but the effect will be a little harder as the acrylis dries to a coarser finish.

As you can see the wallhanging has now been trimmed (but not exactly to the finished size in case of shrinkage during edging) and sewn together with a zigzag stitch. You can then go on to topstitch some of the layers with a decorative stitch, hand sewing can be added, yarns can be couched on and beads added.

Once the stitching has been added you need to square up the piece (a quilter's nonslip square is ideal for this) and cut with a rotary cutter. To finish off you can couch a twisted selection of yarns all round the edge with a zigzag stitch. You could also finish off with a traditional quilt binding. (Don't look too closely at mine-it needs a little tweaking to get the tasselly bits to hang in the centre. I will be adding a lovely purple button too).

You can see that I still have quite a lot to do to finish my wallhanging off but I am really happy with everything I learned today and I can see many more projects on the horizon. I am sure everyone has their own method for this type of thing and there is no right or wrong way of going on. If you go wrong just add some stitching or beading to cover the eccentricity!

PS Thank you everyone for all your lovely input and comments over the last few posts. I have really appreciated all the comments and interest and I'm glad Dilly enjoyed the wagon (dragon if you weren't sure VBG).

* I have googled "golden paper" but I can't find it so I may have misheard. Fine tissue will work just as well or you can work freehand without a template......scary!!! lol

Irish Wallhanging

I bet you're thinking "Oh no! Not her again! Does she never shut up??!!" Hehehehe!

~

~

Anyway, I can't wait any longer! I've finished the wallhanging I told you about here and I think it's safe to show you as I doubt that our friends will be looking at my blog before we see them tomorrow.

The eventual arrangement of images and lace differs quite a bit from my original thoughts. I laid some of the images on background fabrics to frame them. (Don't look at the wonky lace!)

I decided that some hand stitching was needed and I used feather stitch and seeding stitch as you can see above. I also used lines of straight stitching to suggest waves on the top panel which you can see on the finished piece below.

Once I was sure I had finished the hand sewing I backed the wallhanging on a taupe coloured linen and machined a zigzag three times round the edge to hold it all together. I was going to hand couch a cord round the edge but I decided after machine stitching that this wasn't needed. The shamrock embellishments were painted with inks and ended up stitched on at the bottom (more wonkyness!). I've sewn two linen tabs on at the top and at the moment a cinnamon stick is providing the hanger.

~

I've really enjoyed making this wallhanging, although I did have a nasty moment yesterday when I dismantled the hook race (otherwise known as the bobbin casing) on my machine and couldn't get it back together again. The air was blue! I nearly rang Gina! Then I had dinner and tried again. This time I put the things in the right way round! Bingo! VBG. Mind you, I am now having the 'collywobbles' wondering if my friend will like it. I hope it's not too twee.

Experimenting

We have some friends coming to see us from America next week so I thought I would put my very young designing and stitching skills to use and make them a wallhanging. We met G & P several years ago when we were holidaying in Connemara in Ireland. Since then they have looked us up every time they have come to the UK which they do quite regularly. We spend a very pleasant evening having a lovely meal in a local hotel followed by a glass or two of Tullamore Dew, a very palatable Irish Whiskey!

~

I decided that I wanted to work with my own photographs of Ireland on a pieced background. (Do I sound as though I know what I'm talking about? Hmmmm.....)

The fabrics have come from the samples I got from the Scrapstore a few weeks ago and I tried several arrangements with paper versions of the photos I will eventually use.

I also auditioned some trims and embellishments but I think I need to tint the shamrocks to reduce the brightness of the white. The shamrock motifs came from the coasters I bought at Blarney. (Not sure if I have blogged about that). I may or may not use the piece of driftwood as a hanger - it is maybe not quite long enough and will add to the weight for our friends flight back to the US so I may look for an alternative.

I have been experimenting too with the arrangement of the photographs on the backing fabrics but I still haven't settled on the final arrangement.

So, it's taken me all day and I've managed to stitch the layered fabrics together and also tack them onto a cotton backing. The next step is to transfer the images. I think I will use T-shirt transfer and iron these onto cotton which I can then stitch onto the background. I don't think I can transfer the images directly to the background as some of the material is quite fluffy/textured. I'm just hoping the photo images won't be too "strong" and in your face, or maybe I mean realistic, as I want to add some shells and lace and maybe some text here and there. If I am really adventurous I will Free Machine embroider over the surface. I would like to handstitch the embroidery but I don't think I will have enough time.

~

I'm sure I should have drawn all this out and planned it in detail before I started but I tend to be a seat-of-your-pants kind of gal! Watch this space! I have to finish by next Tuesday.

Studio time and special effects

You'll never believe it! I actually set foot in my outside studio (fondly called "the shed") today and actually managed to get some work done. I think I'll wait until I've progressed the various pieces before I post them here. So far I've been working on making more fabric paper, painting bondaweb and starting a background for some winter themed ATCs. All will be revealed - eventually.

Every time I go out to my shed I see this little wallhanging that I made at least 6 or 7 years ago. It is made of various hand made papers, cloth, silk paper and found objects and is no bigger than A4. It was the first time I had attempted anything of this type and I think my longing to work in mixed media and fibre dates from this time.

I was checking out Susan D's blog earlier on and she has been doing some exciting manipulations in photoshop. Susan very generously put instructions on her blog and I have had a little play myself.

This rose becomes








And this quince









becomes this

The background texture in this now looks for all the world like heat treated cellophane. I am sure that this treatment of photographs would bring out some fantastic textures and shapes with the right picture.

To achieve this line effect in Photoshop you click on image - mode - grayscale to get a black and white image and then click on filters - stylize -find edges. I made some adjustments to brightness and contrast. I am sure there must be lots of other effects you can play with. Thank you, Susan for your original post.

PS Don't look now but all my pics seem to be enlarging. Yay!