Flour paste resist

Today seemed a good time to get some "play" in before the Christmas school holiday rush and  having to tidy up my sewing room in anticipation of guests.

Lately, I have been experimenting with different types of resists with varying results:

I have been using Colorstop by TextilDesign and Jacquard water based resist. The fabric was then painted  with fabric paints.  The Colorstop was fantastic and as soon as I washed the fabric the original colour came to the surface.  The Jacquard resist however was not visible (after washing) from the front of the fabric and only slightly on the back.  I have done this twice now thinking that maybe I hadn't shaken the Jacquard resist properly the first time but the results were the same.  I will now try both with fabric dyes and if that doesn't work the Jacquard resist will be heading for the bin!

I also decided to try my hand at using a flour resist.  I saw this technique on the Quilting Arts dvd that a friend has lent me and it looked pretty cool.

 Mix equal parts flour and water to make a smooth paste.

 

Stretch fabric on a board and secure with clips.

Add paste to fabric and smooth out with a spatula or knife. 

 Make marks in the paste with the end of a bamboo skewer and let dry.

Once it is dry I will paint it with fabric paints then remove the resist by soaking in warm water.

I will post more when the results are in.....now to study for my Mandarin exam next week!

p.s don't forget to check out the www.quiltinggallery.com for their birthday "blog hop". 

 Lots of great giveaways to be had!

Making Batik fabric

Yesterday I thought I would try making my own batik fabric.  I got a piece of blue fabric that I had previously dyed and stamped on it using water based resists.

On the right is the Jacquard water based resist (flowers) and on the left is  colorstop by textil design.

I found the Jacquard resist didnt keep its edges very nicely although maybe I just put too much on.

Once this dried I sprayed green/blue fabric paints over the design and let it dry. Once dry, I heat set the paint and washed the piece in warm water.

front

This is the front of the piece and the Jacquard resist is nowhere to be seen whereas the colourstop clearly shows the original colour, however.....

back

Turn the piece over and the flowers using the Jacquard resist clearly show up.

Maybe I need to try this again.....any suggestions or advice would be warmly welcome!

Yesterday we had our Christmas lunch from the ANZA Quilters and we had a lovely meal and we all made a pincushion as a "secret santa" gift.

Photos to follow......

I have also been busy watching Quilting Arts/cloth,paper,scissors dvds that a friend has lent me.  Wow!  my head is going to explode with all the new ideas.  The problem is what project to start first?

LOVE LOVE LOVE the dvds!

Tree quilt update

Just a quick note to give you all an update on the tree quilt. I finally got a few hours of quilting in this week as well as trying out some of my Jacquard fabric paints. Yeah! They are really lovely to work with.

I have added in the windows on the yellow building by painting and thread as well as the tree branches. Im not completely happy with the drainpipe next to the tree trunk. I think I will repaint this once I have bought some black fabric paint (the pipe is supposed to be grey not the blue colour.) I still have to add the shading around the windows on the blue building and add the leaves.
Im not sure how much work I will get done on this in the next week as the kids have two days off school to mark Vesek Day.

Last week the kids had a day off for Labour day and we went to East Coast Park. There we hired a couple of tandem bikes and went biking. It was great fun but really busy and very hot so we ended up in KFC making the most of the air conditioning. We also went mini golfing (also aircon). They had 18 holes which were all landmarks in Singapore. We had an awesome day together!

Sunday is mothers day and Im looking forward to that. My son (7) tells me he has made something "special" for me but I have to wait until Sunday. (No peeking either!)

Happy Mothers day to all the Mums out there and I wish you all a blessed day.