The velvet workshop with Angie Hughes was very satisfying, both in terms of the technique and the outcome.

I had some more of the IKEA velvet, so I have decided to try a variation - still using bleach but this time spraying it on to the coloured velvet  in the first instance to create the element of light.

I used green velvet and blue velvet and put some liquid bleach into an old spray bottle and give the fabric a quick blast.  Then I waited for the bleach to work it's magic.




Now, at this point, with Angie, we went mad with the Quink Ink.  But, a) I didn't have any and b) I did not want to use bleach again, because the mottled background effect was very attractive.

So, I decided to add the next layer of colour in a similar way, but blocking out those areas I wanted to keep rather than bleaching out - hence freezer paper.




As I did not have any quink ink, I improvised with navy Procion dye, mixed up in warm water and added to the spray bottle.



What a fabulous colour!

Peel off the rather glorious colour freezer paper.

And then using home made stamps, acrylic paint is added.



Bit more painting and then onto the stitching.
I will come back to this and show you how it is going.

I was in London at the weekend working for Son No 1 - and I am not really in my comfort zone doing shirt sleeves - but I was allowed a bit of time off for good behaviour and took Son No 1 to Columbia Road Flower Market.

I had forgotten how wonderful it is.  Get there early (Sunday mornings), grab a coffee, avoid the crowds and feast your eyes on the glorious colour.









And it's very convenient for the Olympics!

We popped out at lunchtime and found a bit of installation art lurking in downtown Milton Keynes.






Sadly, there were rules!


But we obeyed, resisted the temptation for human sacrifice and had a little bounce.

Angie uses a fabulous technique where you over lay organza over the base fabric.  It was from doing her courses that I developed my own technique for laying organza over decorated papers.

The organza does two things - it 'knocks back' the surface decoration and ties the design together, and it helps to protect the surface where you have used fiddly little decorative bits.

So the next stage of the exploring velvet was to add organza and then stitch.




It wrinkles a bit, but this is not too concerning.




The stitching is finished.

Then the next stage is snipping and burning - snipping away the excess organza and then using a heat gun to singe the edges.


And voila.

The black has emerged again and the leaves and flowers have come to the front.

A fabulous technique.

What shall I do with myself now?

I know!  I have the answer.  I'll take myself off to the Bramble Patch and indulge in a 2 day workshop with Angie Hughes called Exploring Velvet.

I have done workshops with Angie before, and have used velvet before, but not quite in this way.

I started with a piece of vivid pink velvet from Ikea.  I don't even know if they still sell it (this came from my stock and is a couple of years old.  Other colours were available then too, including an 'off white' which I used for indigo dyeing in the C & G course.)

The rest of the class used white velvet.  But not me.  I thought I would try the vivid pink.

First of all we sprayed the velvet with Dy Na Flow from a pump.  I used teal and lemon yellow.  Then the paint was heat set with an iron (and baking partchment to protect it) and then sprayed with quink ink.


The picture above shows the fabric sprayed and ready for the next stage, plus 2 new funky foam printing pads I made for this piece.

Then we used ordinary Domestos household bleach - the gloopy, thick stuff, and began to bleach back the ink.  The quink ink bleaches back really well, but the dy  na flow doesn't so you get a fab effect.  I also discovered that the bleach removed the colour from the velvet (which presents a whole heap of experimental possibilities).



Here I am using a combination of hand made blocks and commercially bought stencils from Angies supplies to bleach back the ink.  The plastic stencils are fabulous and I think it is probably a good idea to start to build a collection.

The green colour is because I used blue and yellow dy na flow and that pink in the middle is from the original velvet colour.



And here I am beginning to add some paint (acrylics here) - very pale green, white and bronze.

Tomorrow I will add glitter and then stitch!  Very exciting, very satisfying and back in my comfort zone after the challenges of repeat patterns.

Pop back to see the finished piece.

After 15 weeks - we have finished!

City & Guilds Creative Textiles Level 2 is done - final fabrics are printed and portfolios have been handed in.

This is what a final portfolio looks like (all neatly packaged up!)


There was a sketch book, a stitched sketch book to hold all the fabric samples and the final 1m length of fabric.

The last bit of the task was all the paper work - all the method statements, cross referencing, contents pages etc.  I know about portfolios like this - it is part of the day job after all - and it is all about 'showing and telling' the assessor what you do.

And here are our final pieces of work!

On my last post you might have detected a little bit of stress?? Just a little bit??

Well, things may have worked out after all!

I have over printed the final design and I think I might get away with it!

What do you think?

I just thought I would share my pain!

I had this problem on the first City and Guilds course I did - scaling up!  Frankly, the ironing board, the kitchen work surfaces and the sewing room are just not the right environment for printing 1 m of fabric.

My problems (with a meter of fabric - not evidence on an A3 size)

• The freezer paper did not stick properly and came away with the print block.
• Laying out the freezer paper into a regular pattern was nigh impossible on the ironing board
• I ended up having to print on the the kitchen floor and the floor tiles have left an imprint on the fabric.
• The print block (using the wall paper method on my last post) just looks messy on 1 m of fabric
• I have had to drape the fabric loosely over furniture in the sewing room to dry (which I hope it does today so that I can overprint this evening)
• I should have made the back ground design with a screen print - but I just cannot register screen printing when I am repeating!
• I need a printing table!!!  
• This would have been more satisfactory if we had been allowed to do digital printing for the final piece

I am in a panic to get my portfolio finished for the City and Guilds course (which is why I have not written many posts lately - method statements aren't so exciting and anyway, many are based on the various blog posts from the last couple of months).

But in a last minute dash to the finishing post I have determined what the final piece will look like - and now I am trying to replicate on fabric the effect I had created on paper.

Here is the inspiration piece for my final piece - the 1m length of fabric I have to print. I did this on paper, using a paper template to create the white circle and colouring the background by literally just putting the paper onto another piece of paper with inks made from Procion Dyes.  Then I used one of the Thermofax screens to print on top.  

The textured wall paper inked up is on the right hand side with the  fabric sample on the left.

The textured wall paper inked up is on the bottom with the  fabric sample on the top. This paper gives an effect similar to a bark pattern.