Playing Around

Having spent most of the day on uni work I decided I was justified in giving myself a treat. I spent a very relaxing, enjoyable couple of hours stitching Susan’s postcard to send off. I won’t post a picture this week as it will spoil the surprise. Thanks for swapping with me Susan.
Claudia has been continuing her ATC’s. She has made one for her cousin who has just jetted off to The US to work at Camp America. At this stage she is getting acclimatised at her Uncle’s house north of Detroit. The second ATC was for a swap with Annica in Sweden. Claudia spotted the ATC’s Annica had for swap while I was reading her blog.

Claudia has just asked me if she can have her own blog to post her stuff on! I have told her she can when she is a little older. She is off to her first monthly Young Embroiderer’s class at the Embroidery Guild on Friday, so we’ll see if she enjoys that.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing a little ‘arting’, I just haven’t had time to blog. I was reading on a blog about somebody’s fun with painting an old stained cloth so I decided to also try some. I dug out an old cotton sheet that has been used as a tablecloth for trestle tables on large family gatherings. I started with wetting the cotton then ironing until just damp. I used a mixture of permaset, lumiere, and koh-i-nor colours and a wide brush with lots of water. I painted wide bands of colour and then splotches of colour on top. I then scrunched them up and left in a tub to dry.

The resultant fabric, the splotches on the autumn tonings are a little obvious but this fabric is destined to be used as a background for a pentagonal box so it will be layered upon. (I will use the silk paper I showed last post.) The pastel shades are not quite as pale as they appear.

The last play around was with the xpandaprint. I sewed a grid onto water soluble paper and then began stencilling with the xpandaprint and sprinkling on the embossing powder. In the end I just painted on the xpandaprint. As I have not yet purchased a heat gun I had to heat set with the iron. This is the photo after heat setting. You can see where the colour has just come off a little.

I have dissolved the paper in water and these will be applied to my Research Journal cover which I intend to stitch tomorrow (we have a long weekend here for the Queen’s Birthday).
Cheers till next week