A blog about making art and other things using cloth, paper, paint, colour, stitch, and all sorts of exciting techniques, some of which I'm sure I still have to discover! I hope that the joy all this gives me is visible in what you can see here.

Monday 6 February 2012

Scrappy cards and some fabric fun!

A selection of cards that I've been making. They are all made from small scraps of fabric, bits of ribbon, and beads that I've mounted onto squares of brown paper that I used to protect my table while painting, spraying and printing onto some fabric. It seemed too good to throw away, as there were some interesting shapes and patterns on the surface. Having said that, I have covered a lot of it with the fabric scraps. Once I had machine stitched all the pieces onto the brown paper, I just stuck them onto some blank square cards that I bought in our local toy shop! I will take them along to our local gallery, and offer them for sale.






Above is a piece of old cotton sheet that I have sprayed, painted and printed  with a mixture of silk and acrylic paint. I may try to use it for my March or April 'shades of red' journal quilt.

Finally, this is a bit of an experiment really. I mixed up a flour and water paste, then spread it evenly over the surface of yet some more old cotton sheeting. I  drew some random patterns into it with a fork and a stick. When the paste had dried, I crackled the surface up a bit, before covering the  whole lot with some black fabric paint. I'm  now going to wait for about a week for the paint to 'cure', and then I;ll wash out the dried paste. I'm hoping for a sort of batik effect, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. Still unless you 'have a go', at these things, you won't get any results, good or bad, so anything is better than nothing. I promise I'll show the results, whatever they are!

Keep warm and cosy, see you next time.

8 comments:

  1. Love the very small pieces for card making. Are the groups of small beads stuck on or sewn? Liz x

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  2. Lovely cards Cath and your red backgound piece is very effective. I tried a flour paste sample last week and although I got some good results from the crackling of the paste the words I wrote on it didn't come out at all well. Back to the drawing board!

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    1. Yes, I have a feeling that this piece is going to be the same Maggi, the crackled effect looks much more successful on the back than the patterns I made do.

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  3. Thanks Ladies. I didn't stitch the beads on Liz, I'm afraid they are stuck on, but it would have made them so time consuming to stitch on, and they will only go for about £3, so not cost effective really.

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  4. love these piecesx Fancy coming for a coffee and actually see the studio for real!xxxelemaitch@yahoo.co.uk is my emailxxxx

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  5. Hi, Cath. Very lovely cards with the stitching and beading. Your fabric painting experiments are very interesting--I'm tempted to try out your flour paste method. Also liked your red quilt in the previous post--wow!
    best from Tunisia,
    nadia

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  6. Great idea Cath. I shall be down there to have a look!

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