This time I just felt like doing something small and fast and spontaneous. When I looked at the photo of flattened prairie points in the course notes they looked like kites to me. So that’s what they became. The background is some fabric that I had already dyed as sky, so that was the starting point. The kites are also all made from my own hand dyed fabrics.

The tails are made from some commercial print fabric that you may recognise from a previous post. It just happened to be lying around on my cutting surface I made the strips using one of those nifty bias tape shaping tools. I have to admit to just ironing them down using the glue tape that you can also buy to go with the bias tape maker. The kites are just ironed flat but not sewn down. They are of course sewn into the seam so there was a small amount of stitching going on.

Just knocked off another of the activities for the current module. It wasn’t a very demanding exercise. I just had to insert a set of mitred triangles into a four patch block.

I didn’t press the final seam open as per instructions though. I used Myrna’s method for pressing a four patch in a circle. She may be bringing out a booklet or DVD to learn her secrets of pressing soon. I can highly recommend it, when it comes. Taking her pressing classes has been the cause of a major improvement in my patchwork and dressmaking.

Well actually just by me. I’m referring to my activities this week for the C&G course, in other circles known as the chenille technique. I did a bit of reading up on the web beforehand as I had a vague feeling of some differences between the description in the class notes and what I had previously read on the subject. I used the combined wisdom for my experiments.

The first lot of samples were made from these 3 fabrics:

I made 3 samples by rotating the top fabric each time. These samples were slashed on the bias, which is the usual recommendation for the chenille technique. It is interesting to see just how different the 3 samples are.

As I liked the sample with the green on top best, I then used the same order to make the fourth sample (bottom right above), which was slashed on the straight grain. This causes the fabric to fray rather than to go fuzzy. I was quite skeptical, but in fact after a bit of encouragement with a wire brush to cause more fraying, I was pleasantly surprised by the finished effect.

I wet the chenille samples and rubbed them as if scrubbing the dirt out to encourage the fluffing. Not satisfied with the finished results, I gave them a bit of wire brush treatment too, once they were dry.

The final sample was made on a grid of squares. I decided to cut open only alternate squares. The cuts are on the bias so the effect is fluffing rather than fraying. This time I used a reasonably stiff nylon nail brush on the wet fabric to get the chenille effect. This was the most successful method.

I don’t really like the finished effect as much as the slashed lines of the first samples. I was also surprised how little pink from the background fabric showed through onto the top. Although I saw the bottom fabric as being predominantly pink, when you actually look at the colour revealed by the slashing there is more off-white than any other colour. Shows our perception of colour is just that - perception

The top and bottom fabric squares on this last sample were cut from a piece of rainbow dyed fabric that was then bleach discharged. The middle layer is some finely woven purple and white striped cotton. It actually bloomed quite well, despite the advice from most sources to use more coarsely woven fabric.

At the moment, you won’t see any pictures in my postings - we upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress last night and managed to accidentally delete the directory containing all the photos by mistake. I hope they will be back later today…

Update (2008-07-20 at 10:50).
Phew - we have managed to find and upload all the pictures again

I’ve just finished the final exercise on texture on paper. This one started off as a piece of brown parcel paper, which I painted with acrylic paints using this image (from a New Scientist magazine) as a source of inspiration:

The paper was then divided into 4 pieces to be worked on. Each piece when finished was varnished in a strip (across the top in all the photos) with a watered down solution of white glue. I had no idea before I did this exercise that you can use white glue as a varnish. It’s quite effective.

The first paper has no further treatment other than the varnishing.

The second two papers are crumpled and then given a wash of diluted acrylic paint. I used a pale blue colour wash. That’s all that is done to the second paper.

The third piece got some gold oil stick paint rubbed on with a finger. Not so easy to photograph, it actually has more on than you would guess from the photo. It adds an interesting finishing touch.

The fourth piece had oil pastels rubbed on before receiving a wash of pale blue acrylic paint. I used sky blue, white and purple oil pastels.

It took me most of the weekend working on and off, interspersed with waiting for the paint to dry. It has been an interesting and fun weekend.

I’ve never done any brass rubbing myself, but I remember my sister doing quite a few brass rubbings of gravestones in churches. I contented myself with trying out rubbing on various surfaces around the house. The rubbing was done both on paper and fabric.

One of the most interesting results was a rubbing of a rubber foot mat.

So I tried it out on fabric as well:

Then I had a go at making my own designs using things like florist’s wire and tile spacers.

Some creations were better than others. The star made with florist’s wire wasn’t really flat enough to get a good image by rubbing:

The pattern made with tile spacers worked well both on paper and fabric:

I’ve been painting and rubbing this weekend. Doing my homework for the C&G module on texture. Not all the painting is dry yet, but here are some first results. The first lot of exercises was trying various ways to create texture on paper.

This first image is a watercolour wash with salt grains sprinkled on the wet paint. I’ve used this technique with silk painting and have to say I got better results there than on paper. The paint was drying too fast for really interesting effects.

The second method was to crumple the paper into a ball and then apply a wash of watercolour paint to the flattened out paper. I had a few attempts until I got the amount of paint in the wash correct. Too much paint and you couldn’t really see the difference where it pooled in the creases.

The most interesting effect was achieved using cling film. Again a wash of watercolour paint was applied to the paper and then cling-film was put over the top. You then leave it all to dry before removing the cling-film. I like the shapes formed here. They are more organic and reminded me of ice forming on puddles (despite the colours!)

I’ve not been working on my C&G’s the last couple of weekends because of one thing and another. One thing being, I have been doing a bit of dressmaking for a change. I think I mentioned that I bought some linen to make a dress at the fabric market a few weeks ago now. I made a start on the dress before we went on holiday and had finished the bodice and the collar, but not sewn the two together.

Well now the dress is finished. I put in two evenings of sewing after work this week too, as I wanted to get it finished before this weekend. As always the sketches on the patterns never really bear out the reality. The neckline on this is rather more plunging than I would normally have chosen. Means you need to get a good tan without various tidelines due to wearing differing necklines. But all told I am pleased with the finished effect and I do like the neckline, especially the way the collar stands off the shoulders a bit.

Here are the photos taken in the last of the sun this evening in the garden. (Yesterday was too grey) You can judge for yourselves: