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.

Something's Fishy Continues

Something's Fishy is now ready for quilting. Here's how he finished up (and yes, the 3 yellow flower pins will be removed.)

Gelli plate printing again....

Yes, I know, I'm always bragging on my friends. This is LaVon's fabulous gelli print quilt. I love it!  She's done such a great job of the quilting. I love the shimmering silver threads by Sulky that she used. Again, just "el cheapo" acrylic craft paint on white muslin. Stamped with a harlequin design. Just yummy.

This is what the gelli print looked like when she finished it, before it was heat set and quilted. It was wonderful then, but the quilting made it so much more...uh, I think fabulous is the word I'm looking for.

What did I do for fun before I found the gelli plate and introduced it to my friends? I can't remember. It's my favorite go-to technique.

We're in a group called the Art Players and we meet every two weeks to share ideas, thoughts, techniques, trials and triumphs. LaVon brought 5 finished art pieces she had done with gelli printing.

Registering AAQI Quilts

Today I registered 13 Alzheimer's Quilt donations through AAQI. 12 of them were gelli prints, including the one you see to the right. The Alzheimer's quilts are donated for auction with the money going to Alzheimer's research. My donations right now have totaled $979.40. As a member of the $1,000 Promise group, I have committed to donate quilts at least until my personal donation monies have totaled $1,000...so I'm $20.40 short. And I want to keep donating.

I mailed the quilts in, they will be appearing shortly on my page and will be added to the quilts to be auctioned monthly online. If you haven't donated a quilt, please consider doing so. These little quilts I'm doing with the gelli plates are a perfect size, finishing approximately 8" by 10". The size limitation for the AAQI quilts is 9" x 12" so that they can fit into a priority mail envelope to be shipped to the winning bidder. This quilt will be available for bid soon at www.alzquilts.org. Meanwhile, there are many others that can be chosen.  

Quilt Show Sneak Preview 2013

Here is a sneak preview of my Self Portrait Challenge quilt from my local quilt group that will be in the statewide quilt show at the Mesa Convention Center on March 14-16. It is nearly ready to quilt and the entry was due today. Whew! I made it, got it in, it doesn't have to be quilted yet just photographed as a recognizable quilt. The quilting will come later. It will be 11" by 17" and is a "replica" of the photo that appears on my website and blog. It will be interesting to see what it looks like in finished form.

I also entered another quilt which is completed except for the binding/facing. I haven't decided which yet. It's further along, though, the quilting is done. And yes, my friend Sharon Brooks quilted this one for me. It's spectacular. She's a wonderful quilter and has certainly done justice to this one. More on it later...

For more information on how you can see these quilts at the annual Arizona Quilters Guild Show in March, go to www.azquiltersguild.org and select Quilt Show.

Here are some of the earlier versions of this quilt as it was coming together. An I-Pad and Adobe Elements Touch made it relatively easy to do. Ii just couldn't figure out how to do a black-line drawing so I had to do that manually.

More gellis featuring Judy....

Before

After

Before

After

Fishy in Progress

Here is Something's Fishy in Progress. You can see some interfacing behind the fish along the top fin but it will be cutaway soon. I'm focusing on the water right now. I like the dark colors at the bottom but not so much along the left border. What do you think?

It's coming along...

Fishy Two

Here is Fishy as he is progressing. It is so helpful to view the piece through the camera lens to see what changes you might want to make. I can see that I love the gold fin that I placed front and center and I that I want to replace one of the "browner" tone fabrics to the left of the fish's tail with one that is more blue. But he's coming right along as I build the background. Be sure to check back and watch him progress...

Something's Fishy Here

Here's the latest quilt I'm working on. It's a Susan Carlson piece and here it is on the design wall. I'm loving how the colors are going together. It's on the wall (see the pins?) and is thus a work in progress. Next I'll start on the water. It's really fascinating how different colors interact. I'm sure it will change as it get farther along, but for now...WOW!

Today's Gelli Alzheimer's Quilt

One of my favorite gelli prints has now been quilted with slanted straight lines  with lime green thread to match the "combed" effect that I created with Golden fluid acrylic paint on the print. It looks as great as I thought it would back when I created the print.

I'm so happy to have the quilting done and have it ready to ship off and donate to raise money for Alzheimer's research.

So far $967.40 has been raised by my donations alone. Isn't that great? I'm very close to reaching my goal of raising $1,000 in winning quilt bids at www.alzquilts.org. I'm a proud part of the $1,000 Promise group.