20 January 2012

The Crow, Part 1

Those who know me or have been in my house know I  L-O-V-E  crows. I don't mean a little either. I have always wanted to make a crow quilt but didn't really know how to create what was in my mind and heart. Well, I decided to try something really cool. This, by the way, was the experiment I alluded to in my post from about a week ago. This was how I proceeded with my experiment.

I took a sketch of a crow and laid a sheet of water soluble stabilizer over it. I found that a pencil would leave a permanent mark on the film. I pinned the film to a white quilt sandwich of cotton (top) felt, and non-woven polyester for the backing. I bought a 100 yard roll of this non-woven polyester thinking it was like lutrador. It isn't so I am thinking of all kinds of uses for it and a thin quilt backing is a great use.


I took a light grey thread (aurofil) in the shade closest to white. I wanted (in this experiment) for the thread to not be white but not dark or a color. I stitched along the pencil lines, clipped the stabilizer film close to the outer most stitches and gave it a warm bath. It is now drying. I also wanted to mention one of my BEST studio acquisitions - a spinner. When I soda soak fabric, I spin it in my spinner, recapturing the soda water to reuse. That alone paid for the spinner. My dryer died and the replacement won't be here til Wednesday. More about the incredible spinner in Part 2.
Because I used the spinner, this thick quilt sandwich was dry in about an hour. Then I ironed the piece. I used 2- 8.5"X11" peel off labels tapes together on the back (backing side) and printed the now 11"X17" sheet in my wide format printer.


I used an X-acto knife to cut neatly the image and stuck the negative part of the label to mask off the background leaving the crow exposed. Then I took a foam roller and rolled black paint on the crow. The quilting makes the "mountains" black and the "valleys" stay white.

Later I will use the positive part of the label to mask the crow and do something for a background. I may do some more quilting before I start the background coloring. Right now all I have is the rock the crow is standing on.



4 comments:

  1. WAY too cool!! Thanks for sharing process with photos!

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  2. Lots of mistakes were made - not mistakes, lessons were learned. It is in the washing machine and I will have the "finished experiment" online by tonight. This is something I want to pursue.

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  3. WOnderful process and results. I loved seeing the masked images and how you used it with the deconstructed screen printing (PS I think you don't need to preface anything with the "just a beginner" note -- you are an artist in discoverY!

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