Grab the Glue

"The Tree, The Universe, and Me" 2014, Margaret James, 40" x 40"

 

Grab the Glue

I love fabric!

I love fabric designs, & colors.

I love all the fabric stores.

I like the smell, the feel, and mostly I like the possibilities a new length of fabric represents... 

Will it become a skirt, bag, quilt, pillow, curtain, table cloth, or a fun work of art?

Whenever I need a break from the sewing machine I like to use fabric as a painting surface.

Stretched canvases are fabric painting surfaces, but the cotton fabric is coated with a white primer called gesso.

I have been known to glue printed fabric to the surface of a stretched canvas and paint directly onto the raw fabric surface.

I have been known to add raw edged fabric shapes and sew/glue beads into the surfaces also...

The stretched canvas is a contemporary version of fabric in a hoop. Using glue to attach printed fabric to the stretched canvas makes the designer fabric lay flat, have excellent body, and accept the paint smoothly and evenly. 

"The Tree, The Universe, and Me" was created on four 20"x20" stretched canvases which were hinged together on the back. I used a delicate green floral print that I ripped into 20"x 20" squares and flat glued to each segment. The ripped edges looked softer than cut edges, The planet shapes were all raw edged too and the glue prevented any fraying.The tree was painted in with acrylics, the white glow around some of the planets was also done with acrylic paint. I added lots of bead work to the surface. This work was purchased by Novant Health and hangs in the neonatal waiting room in Matthews, NC.

Refresh old canvases or framed works of art with fabric, glue, paint, beads, etc...

 

"... I was overwhelmed with their beauty..."

I folded a piece of ugly fabric into a wedge and cut out a fabric 'snowflake' - sort of like we did in elementary school... I glued the 'snowflake' to an old canvas painting and then white-washed the whole thing with acrylic. I scrubbed in a few colors here and there and glued a phrase I cut from a magazine in the middle of the canvas. 

I'm not sure I like the bubbles that popped up all over it, but I do like the ethereal quality of the surface... 

Mostly, I love to play around with materials and see what happens! 

Cool Ideas and Kids

Ethan planned out every part of the design carefully.

Cool ideas & kids are like salt & pepper. 

This is my nephew Ethan when he was 8 years old. 

This young man has an abiding love for all things dinosaur! He designed a beach towel sized blanket for rest time at school and a pillow case. We appliqued elements on the blanket and we free motion quilted it. Great fun & great memories...

When your methods feel too structured and stale - create a project with a kid!

This is a story, a dream, a memory of childhood - all captured by an 8 year old on a nap time quilt.

The Hysterical Chicken Quilt - in progress

                                                                                                                      

Auditioning background fabrics and placement.
(we really did not like this background)

We drew the chicken on muslin and painted it with acrylics

.

( We love the bird!)

Our old sketches that never found their way to paint and canvas have started showing up as appliques in quilting projects. 

Since most of these sketches involve some kind of twisted humor, they make for curious designs... 

Chicken Soup features one of our favorite sketches - the hysterical chicken.

Quick Applique Method -

1. Find a little sketch that has a good feel - small sketches work fine. Ink over the sketch lines so they show up clearly because you'll need to blow up the sketch on a copy machine.
2. Enlarge the sketch and tape the pieces of paper together to create a big pattern. 
3. Place a lightweight fabric over enlarged pattern and trace in pencil the sketch. Once you've traced your sketch on lightweight fabric - add an additional second or third layer of fabric to the back of applique to softly stabilize the image. 
4. Free-motion sew a single stitch line on top of all pencil lines. 
5. For our chicken applique, we used basic acrylic craft paints to add color to the applique...we kept the paint layer thinner. 
6. If the paint gets too thick the applique gets too stiff and cardboard-like in texture.
7. We spray-dyed the background beige fabric blue after we finished the applique painting. You can dissolve a little bit of acrylic paint in water and put in a travel size spray bottle... that works great.  It only takes a little bit of spray color to add a lot of pizazz to neutral-colored fabric.
8. We cut out the applique leaving a 1/2" blue border all around
9. Next, we played on trace paper with developing a crazy background to go with our hysterical bird.

As we plan through this design we're 'trying on' a radial design to see how it looks. 

Adding blooms and bugs to what looks like exploding lines creates so much comic energy with the
flapping wings, flinging flowers, and flying bugs.
This is a great contrast!

 Juxtaposed a prim/proper English flower arrangement with pleasant bees on a lovely day with a hysterical chicken
#HandmadeHappiness - one quilt at a time!

Get Your Play On!

There's just no substitute for pure-play when you pull out the fabrics, threads, and colors. 

AVOID patterns and prescribed fabric selections when you start to create because that is NOT creating, 

it's copying and following another person's plan. 

If you want to have your threads dance, you have to PLAY your own tune - even if at first it sounds like microphone squelch. 

It's a bitter pill to swallow, but in truth, there are NO guarantees. Much of what we make might be awful. 

Our first thoughts and plans don't always pan out. 

You will be tempted to follow the well-worn path of step-by-step tutorials complete with glossy photos of successful projects. 

You'll argue that it's a waste of time, money, and materials to feverishly chop, piece, pin, and have nothing worth showing when you're finished. 

Without lovely quilts, dresses, pillows, and accessories at the end of the day, you will pack up your machine and vow to do more productive things in the future.

So what's the point of this you ask??? The point is to put on your big girl pants and play. It is a journey thing, not a destination thing. 

It's a chicken and egg thing... you can't create outstanding originals without being original... and you can't be original if you're using other people's ideas. Snap! This is a dilemma! 

Where will the pats on the back come from? Who will ever remark on my cleverness? 

I have no originality, I'm not a designer, an artist, and astronaut, a brain surgeon...

Before total depression sets in and you jump off a cliff, adjust your expectations and re-focus. 

You need fuel - just like a sexy car. You also need chocolate, a little wine, a bit of caffeine - all these things keep the brain rolling. 

Plus you need a creative jolt of energy - so use packages patterns and tutorials as springboards for energizing, not blueprints for building. 

Springboards propel us in directions...get us going north, south, east, west and then we play... and one closing thought - people are fantastic resources, collaboration and doing the old brain-storming, think tank idea-sharing thing is truly priceless... always share your thoughts, talk to others, look at what's trending but stay true to your own playtime and save the last dance for your threads!

Some fun dance moments...

Henri is a dragonfly. He haunts my waking dreams.

Little Fox was born from geometric play and a little graph paper!

The first donation quilt I ever made was this one.
Trees are a favorite idea starter - no plan, no pattern...
Great quilt??? Yes, because I made it and there is not another
one like it on the planet!

Inspiration is seen while stopped at a light on the way to work one morning! 

This is Mama Goat.
She's my hero! Always happy with little scraps of this and that,
she makes the world beautiful!

                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                    How can you not be inspired by a retro BBQ sign ??