Thursday, August 15, 2024

Eco Printing on paper and Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome. I hope that you've had a fun sewing, stitching, making week - whatever you love to do! The Ottawa weather is still hot but the evenings cools down, so all is good here 😊 I went on a road trip to Vankleek Hill with my BF to visit the Impermanence - Éphémère Outdoor Fibre Art Exhibit. I'm happy to say that everything still looks really great. Severe storms hit at the end of July but the art suffered only minor issues that were resolved.

Eco Printing on Paper

My first attempt at eco printing on paper. Not wonderful but promising!

First attempt - love those poplar leaves😍

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Connie, the artist who made that wonderful leaf print that I used to make "Essence of Leaves" (see Related links below). During our visit, I showed her how to make a journal with some of her amazing eco printed paper. We had a great time and I will be going back soon to show her how to make another type of journal.

We talked about eco printing on paper, which I have never done. So a few days after, I bought some aluminum sulfate at the bulk store, found an article on the Internet (see Related links below) and dipped my watercolour paper in the water/aluminum sulfate overnight.

Watercolour paper soaking in water with aluminum sulfate

When Connie and I were talking, she mentioned that with the humidity and heat that we were having, she had heard that you could put your paper in an insulated bag in the sun, instead of steaming the paper bundle. I gave it a try, but it was late in the day and the weather was actually cooling down by then. So, it might be a good idea but I ended up steaming the paper on the stove.

Bundle of paper in the sun, on the top of my swing
It didn't work

Since my bundle was ready, I put an upside down glass casserole at the bottom of my pot, added water, placed the bundle of paper on it and weighted everything down with more glassware.

Bundle in the casserole, weighted down, ready to steam

It was then steamed for two hours.

Steaming the bundle of papers

I really didn't plan the plants that I used. I just put a bunch of leaves, flowers, and ferns from my backyard on the paper and then stacked up the pages. I used cardboard under and on top of the paper bundle. It wasn't perfect, but it was done and now I've learned a lot - so hopefully it'll be easy to do better the next time!😊

Plants used

The plants used make different imprints depending on what they are but also how they are placed - on the side of the ridges or not. For example, the two pages below are the mirror image of each other because the plants were placed between them. You can see on the image on the left that the long leaves (Phlox I think) show up more than on the image on the right. That's because the leaves have ridges on one side and I think that that is what shows up more.

The rounder leaves (poplar) are clearer and more colourful on the right because the ridges of the leaves were placed facing the right page. It's the same for the fern leaf. The green blob on the left stuck to the paper - not sure what it was!

This paper was placed on top of the leaves

The paper was placed below of leaves

Here are another page. In the middle of the left page are some rose leaves that transferred a lovely yellow. There is a flower between them, but I'm not sure what. There is also a different fern on the top.

More images of fern, leaves and a flower

This image contains two flowers, a Cutleaf Coneflower (large one on the left) and a Black-Eyed Susan. Above and below the flowers are two section of leaves from the honey locust tree. There came out better in the image on the left. The colour is most intense at the end of the clipped branch.

The flower prints came out well on this side

Two flowers and leaves

Once I took the pot off the stove, I removed the papers to cool them off and then within an hour unbundled everything. I read that taking the plant material off before they dry is easier than when you wait.

I love the colours that came through. There isn't any great compositions here but cutting out various leaves to insert into a journal could be lovely. I'm not sure what else I can do with the papers but it was easier to do than eco printing fabric.

I think that one of the reasons that the colours are so vibrant is that I didn't rinse the pages - I just let them dry. The fabric that I eco printed a few years ago looked its best before washing. Unfortunately a lot of the colour washed out.

What I learned

Equipment

The glass casserole dish at the bottom of the pot was probably not ideal. Something with holes where the steam can rise through would be better but I didn't have anything that fit.
Larger pieces of heavier cardboards would be the best way to sandwich the bundle. The flimsy cardboard didn't stand up well.
I used large binder clips to keep everything together. I think that was fine ✔

Paper

The water colour paper worked well but since I used flat pieces of paper, each piece got imprinted with whatever was on the other side.
Connie folded her paper in two, putting her material on one side of the paper while the other side of the fold got the imprint. This means that each piece of paper has a clean backing.

Plants

I picked many leaves, flowers and fern from my back yard.
The ones that worked best were the poplar leaves.
The phlox flowers didn't work but the leaves sort of did.
The clips from the honey locust tree came out ok but the colour was very intense at the edge of the clipping.
The two flowers, Cutleaf Coneflower and Black-Eyed Susan came out well. It might be a good idea to flatten the middle so that it doesn't poke through the paper.
The rose leaves were a very pretty yellow.

There are many lists of plants on the internet that eco print well. I'll have to read up on it the next time to see if there is anything that works particularly well.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 494 of Free Motion Mavericks! Another productive week - thank you so much for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts quilted up four Dresden Toppers that were made by a friend. Here is the front of one of them, and the back of another. If you want to see all of the FMQ, hope over to her post!

Look at the FMQ loveliness by Kat!

The FMQ back of one of the Dresden Toppers by Kat

Donnalee's eldest daughter came to visit for a couple of weeks. They finished up two quilts by sewing on the bindings and then made two Christmas runners.

Two lovely Christmas runners made by Donnalee and her daughter

Gail of Quilting Gail made two Thanksgiving mini quilts for the Island Batik Marvelous Mini Challenge. These were designed by Tessa, age 13! Aren't they great?

Two Thanksgiving mini quilts sewn by Gail, designed by Tessa

Deb the Scrappy Quilter finished FMQ her third crazy log cabin quilt. They are all fun and different. You can check out her other two finished quilts.

Deb's third third crazy log cabin quilt

Preeti of Sew Preeti made two minis for the Island Batik Marvelous Mini Challenge. The first one is Goddess Lakshmi's Feet while the second one is Kalpataru (Tree of Life). And what do you think Preeti did with those minis? She turned them into two lovely See-Through Zippered Bags!

Preeti's Kalpataru (Tree of Life) mini

Preeti's Goddess Lakshmi's Feet

Preeti's lovely See-Through Zippered Bag

It's now your turn!

Wednesday, August 07, 2024

Learning Tibetan Appliqué on Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome 😊 I'm so happy that you've dropped by. There has been lots of learning going on - so it's a good week. The weather is cooperating and I'm spending time in the backyard - more enjoying than working in it, but it's all good!

Tibetan Appliqué

If you're wondering what is Tibetan Appliqué, you're not alone. I had never heard of this amazing art until I took Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo's workshop in Textile Artist's Stitch Club last week. It's a very ancient art which actually starts with making cording from horse hair! No, I didn't quite get into that. I don't think my poor hands and wrists could handle it! Thank goodness for alternatives.

The first piece of couched embroidery

During the first week, we drew our image onto stabilized silk. Then we couched the cord following the lines of our image. I used hemp cording that I bought locally. There weren't many colour options. These cords are used mostly for making bracelets.

Couching the hemp cording onto the silk fabric

For the Further Development part of the workshop, we create a composition with other couched pieces on silk. Then we cut these out, finish the edges of each piece and eventually stitch these down to create the appliqué piece.

The finished butterfly and the other silk pieces with patterns on them.

The stitched leaves are ready to finish by turning the edges

As I reviewed Leslie's work to write this post, I realised that there are no double lines of couching in her pieces. I ~~don't think that I can~~ removed the second line of couching in the fuchsia flower without it showing, (so I'm just not going to do that again! )😁

I've finished stitching the leaves. I used three different types of cording - one was the hemp cord, one was a heavier jute cord that really worked well and the other was perle cotton that I doubled. Now I know the difference. The perle cotton is squished down by the couching. It looks OK but I understand why cording is better. I love having an excuse to use my silk thread - it does a wonderful job of couching.

I'll be putting all of these together when each piece is couched and the edges are prepared.

Hemp, jute cording and perle cotton used as well as matching silk thread

As well as being an artist and teaching this wonderful art, Leslie wrote a book about her experience. She spent 9 years with the Tibetan people in exile in India, volunteering and eventually as an apprentice to masters, learning to make fabric Thangkas. She wrote a book which is amazing - easy to read and so insightful. If you don't read her book, I recommend that you at least see some of her work on her website (in Related links below).

Threads of Awakening by Leslie Rinchen-Wongmo

August's One Monthly Goal (OMG)

With a few hours to spare, I'm linking up to the August OMG link-up. By the end of August, I will have started putting together the "Healing Waters" panels quilt for my hubby. I'm not sure how much I'll get done but even pulling out and sewing up a few wonky strips would be a good beginning 😊

August's OMG - working on "Healing Waters" panel quilt

What I learned

It's taken me longer than usual to work on this project because I've spent a lot of time reading Leslie's book. 😊 (I'll be giving it 5 🌟!
It's pretty obvious that cording is better than perle cotton.
It turns out that there are lots of different types of cording. What I'll use mostly depends on the colours that I can find.
It's important to leave enough space between pieces so that they can be turned under. That's why the leaves are two different shades of green!
I was lucky to be given a large bundle of silk fabric already backed by stabilizer. These were originally obtained by cutting up silk blouses and such. You never know when you'll need them 😁
I'll be finishing up the flower soon and then will start to prepare the fabric for stitching together. I guess you'll see how that goes in a future post. It's been much more difficult to turn the edges under - probably because I have a tooth/sinus infection that's making me very cranky and not at all patient. I expect to be on penicillin on Monday and will start to feel better (except for my stomach!)
It was a great workshop and I hope that you take the time to visit Leslie's website to see her amazing art.
I've been wanting to start on the panel quilt but everything seems to push it off the top of the list. I think that I'm nervous about it and procrastinating. It won't be difficult and if it's off, then the seam ripper is my friend!

Free Motion Mavericks

We've had an incredibly busy linking party last week. Thanks so much for linking up! This is week 493 and we have many lovely quilts that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting to feature!

Quilting Gail had a few lovely quilts in the post that she linked up. Here is Julie's Quilt as well as her lovely "There She Blows", created for the Something Smells Fishy blog hop.

Gail's lovely Julie's Quilt

Gail's There She Blows quilt

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts had a quilt pattern published once more. This beauty is Fireworks in Issue 59 of Make Modern Magazine.

Fireworks in Issue 59 of Make Modern Magazine

We have Tula Hexies by Gretchen. What a lovely hexie quilt!

Tula Hexies by Gretchen

Gretchen didn't FMQ her orange peels. She marked them onto her quilt and sewed them. There are many ways of quilting your quilts!

Details of the quilting on Gretchen's Tula's Hexies

Kat of Scrapbox Quilts finished her yellow Lima Twin Quilt. She FMQ it with overlapping circles. It's very effective!

Kat's Lima Twin Quilt. with overlapping circles

Sally from Crafts, Cavies and Cooking diligently worked to a deadline to get her "Birds of a Feather" quilt done. The quilt is really stunning, including the back! You'll want to check out her post to see details of her FMQ.

Sally's "Birds of a Feather" quilt

The back of Sally's "Birds of a Feather" quilt

Deb, the Scrappy Quilter, finished quilting a number of quilts in July. My two favourite are her two wonky log cabin quilts. The log cabin in scrappy fabrics really pops on her black background. I love her border for the second quilt.

Deb's variation on a wonky log cabin quilt

Check out the border on Deb's wonky log cabin quilt

Kathleen McMusing may have used her longarm to finish her Diatom Quilt but since she created some of her own quilting patterns and that it was very custom quilted, I wanted to feature it here. It really is stunning. The pattern is from Quilting Jetgirl and was part of a QAL.

Diatom Quilt finished by Kathleen

Denise of the Quiltery has made a beautiful mini quilt, Nirvana as part of the Island Batik Mini Quilt Challenge. She writes about her FMQ in her post - you may want to read all about it!

Denise's Nirvana mini quilt

It's now your turn!

Thursday, August 01, 2024

"Enjoying Alaska" on Free Motion Mavericks

Hi and welcome. It's been a busy and very hot week here. Other than taking Poppy out for short walks, I've been staying indoors (estivating) where it's cool. When there is humidex in the middle of the night, you know that it's hot!😓😎

"Enjoying Alaska"

I started this piece during my holidays in Alaska. It's always tricky making something other than a scrappy quilt when travelling because odds are, you don't have all of the fabrics you need. I did use a batik that I bought in Alaska that worked beautifully, but the second one, not so much. Since I'm always up to a challenge, I thought that I could make it work. Maybe you'll think that I did, but I decided that I didn't like it and changed it this morning - that's why this post is later than usual!

"Enjoying Alaska"

Here is the photo that I used as inspiration. The water and the forested hills were simple enough to do, but those snow-covered mountains gave me a really hard time - mostly because of the fabric I used as background.

A lovely view of the mountains from the ship

Here are a few pictures of the evolution of the piece. I cut and pinned all of the fabrics onto a white background. I really hoped to transform that lovely print into a mountain. I did stitch all over it but I'm not sure that I succeeded.

Original fabrics - starting to stitch

When I got home, I zig-zag stitched around the green fabrics.

Slowly creating the mountains

Mountains almost done

I got to this point last night and I didn't like it. It's not bad but I'm not a fan of those long embroidery stitches. I slept on it and still wasn't happy with it this morning, so I took out some of my hand-dyed gray fabric and stitched over the snow-covered mountain.

My first attempt at the snow-covered mountain

I covered the mountain with the gray fabric and then added some hand-dyed green fabric at the bottom. I FMQ the snow-covered mountain with gray thread, then used three different green thread to stitch over the green fabric. I blended the areas between the gray and the green.

Final stitching of the snow covered mountain.

It's pretty amazing how many hours it took me to stitch the original snow-covered mountain and then only about 2 hours to cover it up and FMQ it.

To finish off the piece, I added some facing. I used fabric that my girlfriend had brought me from Alaska last year to face the top and bottom. I faced the sides with strips of fabric and then placed the top and bottom fabrics to cover the back.

Making the facing with different fabric.

I hand-stitched the top and back fabrics at the sides. I didn't stitch the two fabrics together since they are both finished and you can peak between them to see the original back of the piece.

Back of the piece with the batik fabric showing

A glamour shot against the rocks

"Enjoying Alaska" among the flowers

What I learned

It's important to challenge myself.
Challenges are easier when they're made of fabric - you can always remove or cover them up if you change your mind 😊
I like the thought that there's a secret, more primal mountain below the gray layer of the snow-covered one that we see.
There are several textile artists who use those large stitches, They make lovely art, but for some reason, it's just not my thing.
I love the contrast of texture between the hand-stitching and the free motion quilting. It's great to be able to use both in a piece.

Free Motion Mavericks

Welcome to week 492 of Free Motion Mavericks! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.

Gretchen finished the largest of her quilts. It's a beauty called Dots & Dashes that she quilted-in-the-ditch.

Gretchen's Dots & Dashes

Kat from Scrapbox Quilts finished a UFO into a lovely dresser scarf. This was part of a FMQ whole cloth row by row designed by Jeanne Harrison in 2019. I checked out Jeanne's YouTube channel - there are a lot of gems there. Thank Kat for introducing me to Jeanne's work.