Paper Fabric Excitement

Here is a new find for us...paper fabric! A group of us attended the Quilt, Sewing and Craft Festival at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix today and came away with a new (to us) technique called "paper fabric". It uses Jacquard Textile Colorless Extender, which I had not yet discovered. It comes in a jar and is a white gel not unlike soft gel medium (a little thinner I believe). After watching a demonstration, we rushed home to try this new product. We loved it at the festival and had to have our fingers in it. We were not disappointed.

This photo is my first attempt at making paper fabric. I've made silk paper before, and I'm an experienced felter, so I may have had a head start, but this was so easy and so forgiving, that all of us who tried it were immediately successful. Here's what happened... I started with a piece of muslin, and a supply of tissue papers, both decorative and handmade papers, and a variety of sizes of natural bristle brushes. I laid my muslin on a craft sheet (freezer paper works as well), painted the surface with a solution of 2 parts colorless extender to one part water, then began to lay out torn pieces of tissue paper or very used paper towel. I always save the paper towel discards that I've used to clean brushes or painted fingers for just such projects. As I laid down each piece, I brushed over it with the water/extender solution. And then the fun began as I continued to lay down dyed cheesecloth, lime green fibers, turquoise natural yarns leftover from felting projects, art papers from Jerry's Artarama www.jerrysartarama.comand Dick Blick www.dickblick.com, any natural fibers I had hoarded away. I covered my muslin entirely with papers, fibers and extender mixture. I added lime glitter from the Art Glitter Institute (www.artglitter.com) here in Cottonwood AZ and I covered the glitter with the extender mixture. I also painted with Jacquard Lumiere paint called Halo Blue Gold which is just luscious. It's a light body metallic acrylic, and while the disclaimer about painting your piece is that if you paint it, the paint will run, this particular paint became a beautiful blend of blues, greens and golds that enhanced the colors of papers that I had already added to the piece. Directions on the paint say to let it air dry for 24 hours before heat setting with an iron, but that works in this application. I let it dry for the required period of time and then painted the entire piece with full strength extender, and again let it set for another 24 hours and later heat set it again for the 30 seconds required to set the metallic paint.

I'm going to use my first piece as a journal cover. I plan to then use blank paper for the pages which will been stamped in the corners with little fishes for embellishment.

By the way, the booth that we saw the fabric paper at was Embellishment Village www.embellishmentvillage.com.