How Do You Transfer Images to Fabric?

     Do you have a favorite image transfer method? There are so many ways to do it.You can take a photo and transfer it from paper to fabric directly using various media. You can get a digital image of it and use transfer papers. You can make a stencil and paint it on. You can thread sketch or thread paint it on to the fabric. I've tried all of these and they all work. But what has turned out to be my favorite transfer method is using a thermofax. (I'll explain the thermofax at the end.)

  Lately, the images I want to transfer are embroideries. On several of my trips overseas, I've visited tailor shops. I just walk in to see what they are doing. They are always busy places and in Asia they work with amazing fabrics and embroideries. At one in Vietnam, I saw a heap of scraps of them scattered on the floor and asked if I could buy them. They sold me a bag of the ones I chose and charged me based on the weight. At one in Bhutan I asked if I could buy them and they refused to take payment. They put a bunch of them in a bag and gave them to me.

     At first, I just kept them and admired them, not wanting to use them.

some of the embroidery fragments from Vietnam

     I decided that transferring the image would be a good way to use them without using them up so I tried to make a thermofax image of one. To do that, I took a photograph of it and then used the App ArtStudio to turn it into a completely black and white image. It took several steps to simplify the photo and get the image I wanted. Then I fed the black and white copy through the thermofax machine on top of the screen film. It burns holes in the film wherever there is black on the copy. I taped the edges of the screen with Gorilla Tape to stabilize it and then it was ready to use with paint or dye to make prints just like you would use a silk screen.

original embroidery fragment

thermofax screen of the embroidery

     Before printing on the artwork, it is important to practice printing it to get the correct color and value. To do that, I mixed Prochem transparent fabric paint with their colorless extender in various proportions. The extender makes the paint more transparent. And then I printed it on a spare piece of the same fabric I was using in the artwork.

TIP: always dye extra fabric (or have extra pieces of your commercial fabric available) to test print on so you don't spoil your artwork. 

To show you how the extender affects the paint, here is one of the experiments I did. In this experiment, I first stenciled red fabric paint onto pink fabric (#1). Then I mixed the red paint with some extender and stenciled again (#2). And added more extender to the paint and so on. I recorded how much paint and how much extender gave each result. Numbers 8 and 9 were so faint that I circled them so that, in the future, I would realize they were there.

(I sew all my experiments onto cardstock, record info on the cardstock, and store them in a 3-ring binder. Not beautiful, but informative and handy for reference.)

Then, I was ready to print on my artwork. I made one print in one dilution and added extender to the paint as I added prints across to the right side so that the image would seem to be disappearing. After I finished, I fused the artwork to felt and then added handstitch. I changed the color of the thread on the embroidery images to get lighter in value as it went to the right and also had the stitches get more sparse (also to add to the effect of it disappearing).  The artwork is called Clarity and is about how things become more clear and fade away and become clear again during our lives. 

Clarity detail

Clarity

 So, if you are interested in doing thermofax prints, you have a couple of options. One of them is to buy a thermofax machine. That's not such an easy or economical way to go unless you will use it often. The machines haven't been made since the 1970's and you can only buy used ones. They are in high demand and are usually over $1000.  The better option for most people is to find someone online who will make your screen from a photo you send them and then send the screen to you.  You can do a google search for custom thermofax screens to find them and compare costs. There are several people on Etsy who offer that service, too.
    I hope this information was useful to you. You can visit my website if you'd like to see more details of the artwork. Thanks for visiting.

What Do You Do When You Need To Sooth Your Soul?

     Do you have an art activity that helps sooth your soul? I've found two things that give me some relief when things are bothering me. One is to repair torn or old cloth items and put them back into good use. The other is to sit down, listen to natural sounds of birds and wind rustling leaves or turn on music while I hand sew free-style embroidery stitches. I learned this peaceful type of meditation when I took an online class with Jude Hill. Until then I only did machine sewing. Now I love doing both. I find that each has its place in my artwork.
     Awhile back I posted here about how one of my favorite shirts got ruined by bleach.

My "boyfriend" shirt

In that post, I showed how I put some patches of cotton fabrics on it and started to boro stitch to give it character. I've been so busy working on my dyeing projects, that I haven't had time to work on the shirt much. But this week, I needed some calm time and I sat down with it and stitched away and it's finished.

Better than Ever

     Now I like it better than before. It actually belonged to my husband and I borrowed it to wear it.

detail of the stitches

I stitched a floral motif in the upper right because that was on the fabric and it was fun. I chose not to cover all the bleach  with fabric because when I auditioned fabric in those places, it looked too much like a bib. So now, I have to wait until at least late October to wear it. The temperatures here are in the high 90's (Fahrenheit) and will be until then. I doubt my husband will want to wear the shirt anymore with its new style. 

     There are things we can all do to get involved in fixing ills of our ailing society and we should, but  we also need to take care of our own mental well being while all this craziness is going on. When I can fix one small thing in an artful way, it is soothing and satisfying. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How Do You Deal With A Clothing Disaster?

     Have you ever had a favorite shirt that got ruined? My husband has a pullover that I call my boyfriend shirt. Sometimes I take it out of his closet and put it on. When he sees me wearing it he says he was going to wear it that day. It's a running joke in our family. One day a couple of months ago I got a spot of grease on the front of it so I took out the OxiClean and sprayed some on before throwing it in the washing machine with the other laundry. After I took the laundry out of the dryer and sorted the clothes, a large part of the front of our favorite shirt was bleached out. The OxiClean had never done that before. It's not supposed to do that!
     When my husband came home, I said, "Well, you know when something bad happens, you have to count all the good things in your day." Then I showed him the shirt and told him what I did. I kiddingly asked if he put bleach in the OxiClean container. And you know what? He said maybe! He said he did put bleach in an empty OxiClean container to use in the garage and somehow it must have got put in the laundry room by mistake. But he never took off the label or relabeled it with "Bleach". Luckily, I didn't spray any of that bleach onto any other laundry that day. Here is that poor shirt.

My damaged boyfriend shirt

     I didn't want to throw away the shirt and my husband didn't want it anymore, so I decided to try some boro stitching on it. I cut out some patches from cotton fabrics I had and pinned them on. And I picked out some embroidery floss. When I get time in between my homework assignments I stitch on the patches. As the stitching gets added, it blends the patches into the fabric of the shirt. The stitches are meant to show a lot and the bleached out part of the shirt is meant to show, also. 

stitching continues and will change colors

     And the shirt will be all mine (maybe).

     The other thing I've been stitching is a small bag that used to belong to my father. He carried his golf tees in it. He passed away in 1993. I've had the bag sitting around and not being used for anything and decided to honor it. 

Golf tee bag

As stitching is progressing on one side

     So that is how I dealt with this particular clothing disaster. Incorporate part of the disaster into the artwork of the stitchery. I think it will work. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their blogs so that they know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Have You Ever Participated In Another Blogger's Activity?

     There are several blogs I read regularly. Some are listed on my sidebar and some I just have on my Feedly reader. One of the blogs on my sidebar is from the wonderful artist, Melanie Testa. A few posts ago,  here, she suggested a sew along to make one of her sewplies purses. I watched the videos she had on her blogpost and decided to try it. I also decided to try to make mine completely by sewing it by hand since the girls I'm working with at our local Boys and Girls Club want to sew purses and they don't have sewing machines. I thought if it worked out making it by hand, then they could try to make small purses by hand. The only part I made using a machine was the straps. Since they are so long, they would take forever to sew by hand. If the girls want to make purses, I'll have to do the straps for them at home on my machine.
     You can see my sewplies purse in process on my blogpost here. And I finally finished it. Her pattern is meant to wear close to your body and has clips that close around your back.

Sewplies Purse

The front of the purse closed

The back of the purse opened

The back of the purse closed

The inside of the purse with a pocket

I had to sew my scissors pocket on the inside at an angle in order to fit my scissors, but it works that way just fine. I love the pattern. Thank you, Melly! Go and visit her website . She'll be starting up some classes soon. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on the artists' blogs so that they know you visited. Thanks for stopping by.

To Boro Or Not To Boro?

     When is it appropriate to add the hand stitches that are characteristic of the Japanese patchwork known as Boro? I love the look of it. I'm no expert on Boro, but I've done some reading on it and I've browsed images of it on Google and on Pinterest. I've even created a Boro board on my Pinterest page of images that inspire me. If you aren't familiar with it, basically what I've learned is boro used to be from rags that were worn by Japanese peasants and were patched and repaired with stitching.  Often, they used fabric that was dyed using indigo, so usually you will see blue fabrics when you look up boro. Now, when you see boro fashions, you will see patched fashions with large stitch work. Some of it looks ragged and some of it looks very refined. If you want to see it on Pinterest, be very careful when you type "boro", because Pinterest keeps changing your word to "boho". You have to keep changing it back to "boro".  If you visit my Pinterest page https://www.pinterest.com/reginabdunn/ you can see my board on boro.  Or you can Google "boro stitches" and go to images to see what it looks like.
     Anyway, I decided to experiment with boro and create some clothing for myself in this style, but in a little of the more refined way. My husband got to be the guinea pig for my first venture. He asked me to repair two holes in his khaki shorts. I used one of the tutorials I found on Pinterest as a guide.
1.) I trimmed the edges around the hole.
2.) I cut a patch of patterned cotton fabric a little larger than the hole.
3.) I placed the patch inside the hole and hand sewed a running stitch around the hole using a darker thread.
4.) I cut a patch of thicker cotton fabric larger than the patch and pinned it inside on top of the other patch.
5.) I hand stitched up and down a pattern of stitches all up and down the patch to reinforce and to decorate.

first patch from the outside

from the inside

second patch from the outside

If I had just done the patching normally, I would have used a khaki-colored thread that blended with the fabric and not done that pattern of stitching. And I would have used a khaki-colored patch. But this is boro. I made sure to tell him how special it was. :) 

     Then, I had the idea to make myself a boro Christmas scarf using leftover Christmas fabric scraps I have. I decided to model it after some of the images of scarfs from my Pinterest board. So I cut rectangles from my scraps and pieced them together until I had two large enough pieces and then put right sides together and sewed them, leaving an opening large enough to push the right sides back out.  Here's my scarf.

Christmas scarf

     The intention was to add large boro hand stitching to each section in contrasting thread to make it look more informal and worn. But now, I think I like it just as it is. So that's why the title "To boro or not to boro?" I think, in this case, I should not add stitching. Maybe, I'll piece a bunch of denim rectangles together and then hand stitch with green, red, and gold floss to boro another scarf for next year. Can boro even be used as a verb? I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts so that the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

How To Soothe An Aching Heart?

     Have you ever needed to send a home made gift to someone quickly? My sister's dog of 17 years died yesterday and the whole family is hurting. Her kids, my two nieces and my nephew, are grown now. They are in their twenties, but they are very upset at losing their longtime friend. I wanted to send them something more than just a card and I wanted to send it quick while they need it.
     So I went through my stash of fabric and pulled out a multi-colored purple/pink cotton and cut out a heart shape for each of them. Then I chose a purple fabric for a background selecting a checkered one for my nephew thinking that was a little more masculine.  Here are the steps:

1.) Iron on fusible to the heart fabric.
2.) Cut out the heart.
3.) Iron on fusible to the background fabric. Cut out two of them for each heart.
4.) Cut out a piece of interfacing the same size as the background piece. I used one that has fusible on one side.
5.) Iron on one of the background pieces to the interfacing.
6.) Iron on the heart to the piece above.
7.) Embroider a narrow zig zag around the heart.
8.) Iron on the other background piece to the back of the piece with the heart. That way the back shows no stitching and is nice and neat.
9.) Embroider an edge stitch around the edge. I used a buttonhole stitch.

3 hearts with ruler

close up of heart for my nephew

     These were quick to sew up and I put them in separate cards and wrote "Keep this heart for whenever you feel the need for a hug."  And then I sent them off in the mail.
Afterwards, I thought I should have printed that message on the back of the heart squares.  Next time.  So I know I can't heal their aching hearts, but I can show I care and that holding a heart may help a little. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday  where you can find other art quilt blogs and Sew and Sow Farm. Please make comments on their posts to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Do You Make Your Own Christmas or Holiday Cards?

     Should I make my Christmas cards this year or should I just buy a set and send them out? That's the question I pose each year. If I make them, I like to do it in the summer when I'm less busy and then they are ready to go. But I forgot to do it this summer. And I'm not one of those artists that can just slap a collage together. I take a long time to make design decisions. I'm getting quicker about it than I used to be. This week, I decided that I would give myself two days to put together a design and finish a small art quilt for a card cover. If I didn't accomplish that, then I would purchase cards.
     I began by choosing a previously monoprinted fabric for a background. I thought I wanted it to be zen-like. So I chose another previously monoprinted fabric in a complimentary color and cut out a sun shape and hand embroidered it onto the background which I had placed onto batting.

in progress

     Then I got the idea to put a bird and a saying on it. For inspiration, I browsed through my book Inspired to Quilt by Melanie Testa, which has helped me often. And I reviewed my notes from a class called Spirit Cloth 101 which I took from Jude Hill. That class not only showed me many marvelous techniques in hand stitching, but it also passed on the art of story telling in cloth. And the great news is that the class is now open to all for free. Here is a link to it.
     So I finished it up by thread stitching a bird with my sewing machine onto commercial fabric, cutting it out close to the stitching, and hand sewing it onto the background. Then I embroidered branches using two colors of embroidery floss (3 strands) in a wrapped back stitch. I printed out text onto white cotton muslin, cut them out and hand stitched them on. Next, I cut out a piece of commercial fabric an hand sewed it on with embroidery floss. To finish it up, I added a piece of fabric on the back, and then I used two colors of embroidery floss and whip stitched around the edges (6 strands of the dark teal and 3 strands of the rust).

Joy and Peace

     I plan to scan the image in the computer and add a frame. I'll use that for the cover of the card. I'll put some text for inside the card and take it to a printing company and have them print the cards for me. That's the plan, anyway. We'll see how it looks as a printed card. Of course, the watermark won't be on it.  If it doesn't look good, then this year will be about store-bought cards. At least I tried and I ended up with a small art quilt. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

     

Where Do I Go When I'm Not Home?

     Once again, I am returning home after another adventure. This time, I spent two weeks in the Amazon area of Peru. The last two of my blog entries I had scheduled to post for while I was away. I was able to have them appear, but I was in an area that did not have an Internet signal on Fridays so I couldn't link up to Nina's Off the Wall Friday like I usually do each week. The women in the river area of Peru do amazing embroideries. The base city for my trip was Iquitos, Peru and here are two of the local women setting up shop.

One sewing and one setting up

Here is a cloth I considered buying. The white "outlines" around the flower represent anacondas.

All hand embroidered

The asking price was about $200. Of course, the tradition is to bargain. I have nowhere in my home to display it, so I didn't bargain. I just admired it for quite awhile and said how beautiful it was and moved on. I did buy a beautifully embroidered blouse from another woman at the end of our trip, however. And several baskets and bracelets from a village on the river to give as gifts.

     One week of the trip was a 7 day cruise on the Amazon (my husband and I were the only passengers with 6 crew and one guide). They didn't cancel because they had to move the boat anyway. And the second week, we stayed at a jungle lodge.  Here are few photos.

Our way, cool boat, The Selva Viva

Hiking with guide

picked up a friend

owl monkeys so curious about us

our tent for a night out

rainbow over the Marañón River just below the source of the Amazon

     It was a marvelous trip and my head is full of images of amazing birds, monkeys, foliage, and sounds. I'm glad to be home in dry clothes again and away from the many bugs. But the discomforts were so worth the enrichment. I'm linking this, successfully, to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

Moon Rocks Falling

     I'm continuing with the hand sewing project from the on-line class with Jude Hill on the Spirit Cloth website. I've sewn a bit of prose using a split stem stitch and added roots to the tree symbol. After I took this photo, I started to embroider a river. The river is going to wind around the quilt from rock to rock. So here's an update.

Falling rocks in progress

In between planning the next steps for this project, I've made two more wheelchair covers. I'll post those photos on a future post. And I'm working on an iPad cover. I may never post a photo of that. I'm not too talented with functional items.

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can visit other art quilt blogs. Please make comments to let the artists know you stopped by.

Step 7 of The Stamping Experiment

     Well, so far my blog looks the same to me. The ax hasn't fallen yet. I've been busy stitching and organizing my studio.
      Regarding the stamping experiment, it is almost at its end. I used embroidery floss in a raspberry hue in a stem stitch to outline some petals of flowers. Then to give them more of an accent, I added some more petals in a straight stitch in a paler value of perle cotton. And stuck some very pale pink perle cotton in there for a highlight. I stitched some straight stitches in the center of each flower in a golden perle cotton topped with french knots to finish them off.  Where the third spiral used to be, I added some more chain stitch-detached stitches in blue and think I will add some more in that spot to make it darker there. Following the photos, I'll make some observations that occurred to me as I've looked at this piece lately.

Observations:

1.) This piece has become more about embroidery than about the stamping design and texture.

2.) One of the parts of the stamping I liked the most was the floral stamping. It had white outlines around it that suggested batik to me and those outlines got covered up by the stitching. Perhaps I should have stitched flowers around the stamped flower images instead of on top of them.

3.) I had intended to have the thread merely act as an accent to the gray paint; not overtake it.

4.) If I wanted to pursue this stamping/embroidery, I would have to make many more iterations to get the effect I intended. But I want to get back to creating my body of work and this was just a side bar to that to see what would happen.

5.) I'll show you the finished product/s in a few days.

Step 4 of The Stamping Experiment

I added straight stitches today in a variegated light blue perle cotton thread running along curvy diagonal lines (5 of them). You may have to look hard to see them in the photo. Has the image changed for you now, or do you still see the same thing as before? For me, it is coming to life more. This latest stitching has given it more movement. Here is another link to a very detailed site of many embroidery stitches and tutorials on how to do them. http://www.embroidery.rocksea.org/reference/picture-dictionary/ People are so generous to take the time to create these sites aren't they? Please take time to add comments or questions. Thanks.

Step 3 of The Stamping Experiment

I stitched with the first color of thread. I used a perle cotton thread in a bright blue. I chose a favorite stitch from childhood called the Lazy Daisy Stitch. But since I didn't make a flower and connect the loops it's actually called the Chain Stitch-Detached. (I found that out when I looked it up last night in an old embroidery book I have.) Here is a link to some handy stitches and to another blog that is helpful, colorful, and fun from  Jane LaFazio .

Step 3 of Stamping Experiment

So what does this look like to you so far? Please tell us? The more opinions we have, the more interesting this will become.

Step 2 of The Stamping Experiment

The next step is to choose the color palette and focus in on one part of the cloth on which to begin.

Threads I will probably use

I plan on doing this artwork mostly by hand. I need a break from machine sewing after the weeks at the machine I just spent. Plus, it will be fun to practice hand stitches and maybe learn some new ones. Do you have anything you want me to show you in detail as I go? Please ask.