I've lost count of which week we're on, suffice it to say we're nearly at the END!
I can't believe we've nearly finished the course and with two Bank Holiday Monday's in May and a half term, we're very short on sessions.
We're hopeful that there will be a follow up course next September for those of us currently doing level I (dependant as usual, on numbers, I expect) but we're not sure about the current level II's
Our projects need to be underway and progressed pretty smartish ready for marking beginning of June too.
This week we worked on bondaweb transfers to fabrics and WHAT a fun session! this is easily the best we've covered in both effect and ease in creativity and I spent the afternoon experimenting with the samples prepared, initially, in class this morning:
At first I was a little doubtful, I didn't care too much for cling-film experiments and didn't feel inspired to do more than a few samples to show willing! and DID fear this technique would fare the same - HOWEVER I think its really COOL!
The four photo's above show the stage which I did at college today where we each painted the adhesive side of the bondaweb with acrylics and something "sparkly" which I've forgotten WHAT at the moment - unfortunately we forgot that this sparkly paint should go on first and is thus largely hidden when applied to fabric, never mind eh ..
It was quite a lot of fun dabbing about in paint and water and some ladies got quite artistic and started painting "patterns" and creating colourful images - I just dolloped a pile of paint and spread it about and hoped it WORKED!! WHICH as you can see below: it DID, happily:
I'm a bit out of sequence here with my pics, but the shot above shows the blue/green bondaweb applied to a piece of pre-washed calico. You get a sort of mottled effect and it needs to be left to completely dry before being ironed onto the target fabric and I was quite glad of the tip to use baking parchment as I did get quite a lot of gunk on the iron (particularly the piece I turned the WRONG way! you only do this the once, mind! Luckily I have a spare iron used exclusively for messy jobs like iron on interfacings and the like and its cleaned up quite well, considering.
Our tutor, Sarah, had demonstrated a few variations and I was keen to use the sheer fabrics to overlay and below you can see I've cut out a piece of "floraly" bits from a chiffon scarf and applied bondaweb to this - I've left it with the paper on so that you can see what I've done. I cut it out quite close as I wanted to retain the effect of the paint on the main target fabric.
The shot below you should look at first, really! as this is the piece of chiffon scarf that I applied the bondaweb to before trimming it to that of above pic.
One of the four pieces I painted got applied to a piece of the left over pink I'd used for my quilt, its a very pretty piece and nicer in reality than the shot below shows as it IS pink around the edges and peeping through the wash of colour!
This is a pile of scarf-y bits I brought home to experiment with
The shot above shows the lovely blue/green on calico which I was initially very pleased with and had some rather fabbo ideas of doing something sea themed but rather spoiled it by thinking that I'd get a subtle effect of something vaguely representing seaweed with the chiffon I spent AGES cutting bits out of but then it didn't blend as I'd expected and sort of just "sits" there looking out of place! Never mind, I might be able to peel it off, with luck, and start again.
These were the two pieces used on the blue/green, below, just before I set to with the scissors to painstakingly cutting and trimming away the bits in the middle to "peek" through.
These two shots above and below are of the pink cotton with a super bit of floral peach chiffon applied to the top, and looks really nice and I'm pleased with it and plan to stitch into this later.
The pic below is another one I'm pleased with, this has gone onto a piece of silver sparkly polyester organza and looks lovely, you can't see its sheer as I've got in sitting on my cutting mat. I thought I'd taken a photo of the little flower I've applied to the bluey/greeny bit in the middle - later I'll upload a couple more photo's (maybe!).
This last photo is my favourite! It looks far nicer in reality, and, as for above, I've somehow forgotten to taken a photo of it with ITS piece of fabric on top too!!
I applied this bondawebbed paint to a piece of green silk dupion and the chiffon I've applied on top has a lovely image that suits it but I had not realised I'd need to trim it quite close BEFORE applying and wish I'd actually done this one after the others.
The fabrics I applied the bondawebbed painted tops to were calico, cotton, organza and silk.
It won't be very big, but it is rather nice and a lot more useful than sitting in my box of quilting fabrics! No idea what I shall do with it at this stage (I suspect Bertie will end up with a claim on it, mind).
