Fusing and musing

I want to try melting different manmade fabrics and burn them with the soldering iron and see what will happen.

It took longer than I thought it would,. Also had to clean the hot iron regularly with a rag, so it is messy as well.

Once experimentation was over, time to put it into practise.

Layered chiffon, purple crushed polyester, and red felt together. Traced a Celtic knot onto Press ‘n’ Seal and pressed that onto the top.

Using purple thread to secure the layers together, I quilted around the Celtic pattern, reverse stitching before moving to the next area of stitching. I cut the threads at the end.

Once stitch together, used the soldering iron to cut out some of the gaps in the pattern. Takes a long time, so decided to run the hot iron over part of the pattern to create texture, melting the layers together and the red felt showing through.
Also used the hot iron to “cut” the top chiffon layer away from the polyester.
In the end, sewed the knot onto a red background.

Iris has suggest incense sticks for burning holes in organza or chiffon. I will give that a try in the future.

Hamner Hills

Tidying up I found an old canvas that I had used when practising colour mixes with oil paints, it has to be at least 10 years old. The colours remind me of the hills in Hamner, South Island.

Using some left skeletons picked up on Mt Ngongataha, and using textile ink, painted them yellow, red, and orange.

Once dried the ink has given the leaves a little more strength, but using black tulle, collaged them as autumn trees to the canvas background.

Found some turquoise ribbon, and laid 3 strips inform of the leaf “trees. Felt the landscape need green, so chopped up a green fabric scrap into to bits, and arranged as shrubs on the right.

Twirled some ‘jazz” novelty yarn as grass/ flax at the front, but I am not sure if it is lost in the colours.

Sewed everything down with orange / yellow variegated thread, and managed to break 2 needles in the process. Perhaps the machine doesn’t like sewing through canvas?
Outlined the leaf shapes, do they look like trees? Used the skeletons as a guide and sewed over them for trunks and branches.

Looks a bit messy, but I like the trees.

Spring Flowers

Last week I notice the willow tree with ting green buds on it, and on the News last night the Godwits have flown back from Alaska, so Spring is here - Fantastic, is that why we had the most amazing hailstorm, and lighting yesterday.

So the quilt this week is for Spring.

Found a piece of blue fabric I had dyed with marbles and rubber bands, and felt there were “flowers’ in it. Perhaps I can try to exploit the impression with contrasting tread, and see if I can sew “flower” onto fabric.

The pale blue looks like petals, and the inked dark centres have a definite petal shape.

Yellow silk thread and with batting and backing, I attempted to quilt the fabric, creating the flowers, following the ink lines. I am happy with the result, I think they look quite oriental in their design – less is more.

I changed the thread to pale blue and quilted another 2 flowers into the surface. This is relaxing, no pattern to follow, just the impression on the fabric.

Small seed beads on the centre of the flowers completed my need to embellish.

Circles

I need to get my circles looking like circles, not pretending to be circles. Found an article in the McCalls Quilting Magazine April 2008 about using a “sleeve” to gather the circles.

I cut a 3.5 cm circle template out of wet/dry sandpaper. (180grit)

Then cut a larger circle of fabric, about 5.5 cm, using the sandpaper circle as a guide.

Using calico, I then cut another larger circle, 7.5 cm, this is for the sleeve.

Using crochet cotton and a long running stitch around a large calico circle, a gathering sleeve is made. I left the threads for pulling.

The smaller fabric circle was placed inside the sleeve. The sandpaper circle (grit side down) on top of the fabric circle placed on top. Spray with water.

Gather sleeve around all the sandpaper circle, holding it in place with your finger. Pull up tight.
Press with dry iron. Turn it over, press again. Allow to cool and open sleeve and remove the template and fabric circle.
Press gathering sleeve open, ready to use again.

It took me a few goes, to get the gathering tight, the book said to use spray starch, but I didn’t have any in the cupboard, so that is why I just sprayed with water. I guess it would give a crisper edge.

The process quickly made 10 circles, from which I selected my favourites and made a “building” and hand sewed them to the background fabric.

These were then machine embroidered, connected all the circles.
Couldn’t resist machine embroidering a larger circle in the center. Everything was then quilted together with metallic thread.
Easy technique and I will use this again on larger circles.