The next step

The design needed to be brought out so I painted with white opaque fabric paint.

Next step, background quilting.

Playing with Scraps continued

The next step in this process was to lay some "stitch and tear" stuff over the top.

I think this is a brand name but there was nothing on the packaging and I bought my roll at a show years ago. You could use tracing paper or tissue paper for this step.

Referencing a drawing that I have done of the teasels that appear around here every other year, I sketched this.

(Don't you just love a plant that can only be bothered to turn up every other year!)

I then use the lines as a guide for my thread sketching. I also think I need to I need to do some de fuzzing of my sewing machine!!

If you haven't tried this before it is a great way to get a design or motif onto a background. You can move around by sewing a few stitches on top of each other before moving to where you need to go next. The threads can be snipped off at the end.

There is no need to do too much stitching at this stage as the simpler the stitching the easier it is to remove the drawing.

When the stitching is finished, the paper comes off.

Playing with Scraps

Not much fabric painting going on here at the moment. It is just so wet and cold, meaning slow drying times, so I have decided to wait for the warmer weather. It is coming isn't it!!

Time to do something else.

This particular bag of scraps has been following me around for years now; and I do mean years. The scraps in it are almost entirely bits of previously completed projects. Some may say they should have been chucked but....

This is the bag tipped out.

Sorted into colours...sort of.

There seems to be a lot of green, and so that's what I am attacking first.

There is a mixture of batiks and hand painted greens, and the pieces were more or less in strips so I have laid them onto a piece of fusible batting and ironed them down.

The hand painted pieces have been stamped with some commercial and home made stamps (and I have absolutely no memory of doing them, or what they were for!)

More to come.

Inspiration (and giveaway winners).

I picked up some inspiring postcards on my recent trip to Portugal.

I can definitely see some ideas for art quilts.

This fella below was everywhere, but as I couldn't carry a big ceramic one home with me I bought this shopping bag instead.

I have drawn the winners for the giveaway of Seaside Home.

The book will be going to Debbie of Woolen Sails. The ebook will be going to Nini, who kindly promoted the giveaway on her blog:)

Thank you to everyone that entered. I enjoyed reading about your favourite beaches and was thrilled to find that I knew a few of them personally.

Wishing you all a productive week.

Poppies....

....everywhere.

I had the pleasure of working with Port Talbot Quilters yesterday. Apart rorm lots of stitching there was lots of laughter and lots of lovely homemade cake!

For me it was a thrill to see these ladies, working outside their comfort zone in a free style, and enjoying it.

If you fancy doing some poppies, there are some ideas here.
And don't forget the giveaway here.

Giveaway! Giveaway!!!

I tried to think of a catchy title for this blog post but failed but as promised here is a giveaway of Seaside Home.

The book is full of great projects from quilts to stuffies and bags, all with a seaside theme. This morning I rustled up this from the book using my hand painted fabrics (of course). "Three Wish Fish" was submitted by darling savage, and is a fun, quick to do project.

If you would like to win a copy of this book leave a comment telling me the name of your favourite beach and I will enter you for the draw for a hard copy.

If you would be so kind as to promote this giveaway on your blog or facebook page, I will enter you for the draw for an e-copy of this book which will be sent to you direct from C&T publishing, who just require an email address. Just post a link in a separate comment for this.
In the unlikely event that someone wins both draws I will email that person asking whether they would like to take one prize and put the other back in the hat (so to speak!) or nominate a friend or family member to receive the ebook or hard copy.
Sound okay?

Here is a peek of my project and you can see more by visiting Amazon for a "look inside", or the C&T flickr page

I will post internationally and I will keep this giveaway open until April 23rd as I am off on my hols!!
Have a great Easter everyone.

Recommended

I am sometimes surprised that there are often those who interact with me or this blog who do not realise that what I do here is mainly about PAINTING fabric and not dyeing fabric. Now I know that you can paint a fabric with dye but MOST of the time, everything you see here is done with textile paints and not dyes.

It began with this piece.

Which was the final piece that I had to do for City and Guilds Patchwork and Quilting. It had to be monotone and after dyeing yards and yards of fabric (with varying success) I was looking for another way, so I decided to use textile paint. All of the fabric for this piece was done with one small pot of Pebeo Setacolor  Transparent fabric paint, with more or lesser degrees of water added to achieve the different values.

Well what can I say, for someone like me, working in a domestic situation, I was hooked.

I wanted to learn more and with that aim in mind I purchased this.

As you can see it is well used and I still refer back to it often. It was my guide to getting to know the ins and outs of fabric painting and if you are keen to have a go this would be one of my Top 5 recommendations.

Those eagle eyed among you will have noticed that I recently added an Amazon window to my blog.
I have done this not because I anticipate financial gain but because it seemed to be an easy way of showing you the books that I have used and would recommend one obviously being this one.

I can also recommend her DVD. If you want to see more of Mickey Lawlers beautiful hand painted fabric visit at SkyDyes.

And if you like books stay tuned because by the end of the week I will be having a giveaway of Seaside Home.