Pounded fabric

Pounded fabric is still a rather unknown method of painting fabric. I learned this technique in one of the C&G courses I took with the Kemshalls. The whole proces might easily take up to 2 weeks, but the results are worth it . This time I used 2 pieces of fabric, one commercial black Kona and a blue/purple dyed one which needed a bit more:

I did not take pictures of every step, but if you go to the And then we set it on Fire blog, you will see that Kelly took pictures of every step.
I soaked each piece of fabric and put it scrunched into a plastic bag. The fabric was wet, but not dripping wet. In a cup I put silver and white acrylic paint - for the black fabric - and diluted this with water. For the blue fabric I used gold and magenta. Using a bristle brush I pounded the paint all over the fabric. Closed the plastic bag and put it into a container on top of the heater in the sunshine. Both bags remained like that for about a week. For the second week I opened the bags a bit and again left them there. After 2 weeks the fabric was dry enough and this is how the black one looked when I took it out of the plastic bag:

Not very attractive yet, but promising. After opening the fabric and ironing the pieces looked like this:

They look wrinkled, but they are ironed flat.
I am not a scientist, but I do know that the warmth creates the capillary reaction. The paint starts creeping up in the folds and remains there while the fabric dries.

Mulberry bark

Carol asked me about mulberry bark. I have included a picture of a piece of bleached mulberry bark (with 2 skeleton leavves). The bark is harvested from the Asian Mulberry tree and bleached. As you see in the picture it has a wonderful texture. You can split it into thinner layers or wet it and form in a shape. After drying the shape will remain. It can be embroidered  and hand or machine stitched. And as you saw in my previous post, painting is also an option.
This is not mulberry paper. The paper is also made from the same tree, but much thinner. An other name for this is Kozo paper or Gampi paper.

texture and paint

A quick and easy way to create texture is to use a piece of mulberry bark. It comes in either the natural color or bleached. Don't pay attention to the background. I just picked a piece of fabric, knowing that it would be covered anyway. As I am working with circles, it will not be a surprise that this is another circle quilt :-)

I quilted the background first and did the facing before I stitched the circles on it. Next step was to add a layer of gesso and paint. Without the gesso the fabric would soak up a lot of paint. I used my favorite Golden fluid acrylics. In this picture you see that the quilting shows very well now. The texture of the mulberry bark was there, but only when you looked at it from the side..

To solve the lack of contrast, I added another layer of paint. This time only on the mulberry bark circles. I admit the color is not perfect, it is a bit too blue to my liking, but for the moment it will stay like this. Maybe I will add some more at a later moment.

 Here is a detail picture:

I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out the link to see what other artist have done.

Circles

Are you getting bored yet? As you see I am not :-). I still have a number of ideas I want to do with my circle theme. For this one the inspiration came from a piece of gauze I bought quite some time ago at JoAnn's. I liked it when I saw it, but had no specific plans when I picked it up. It was lingering in my stash waiting for the right moment.
For this circle quilt I played with the idea of transparency. The circles are gauze and therefore partly transparent, not where the foil is. The black strips are made from 2 layers of black lutrador, slightly transparent. Everything is stitched onto a snow dyed piece of fabric.

The only problem I am having with my circle quilts, is that I am running out of ideas for titles. No clue what to call this one. Maybe I should start numbering them. It is not very creative, but could be a solution.
I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out the link to see what other artists have done this week.

Summer adventure

I just realised that I had not yet shown the quilt I made for the Sky-is-the-Limit group for the month March. The theme was summer adventure and I choose a surfer. Okay I admit I have never been on a board - or have plans to do so :-). For the background I used the same technique as I did for my previous quilt Shoreline, a combination of raw edged strips with added cheesecloth. Size is 12"x12".