A Little Bling in Late Winter

I bought this black fleece jacket recently and decided it needed a little sprucing up, so I added this teal ribbon on the collar.   My friend J picked up the ribbon n Saudi Arabia a few years ago.  It does the trick! 

 

Little Things: Scrap Flower Yo-yo Hat Pin

Scrap Flower Yo-Yo Hat Pin

Years ago, back when I sold my journals at a holiday craft sale, there was a lady across the aisle from me selling recycled wool mittens (The real thing!).  She took some of her scraps and had the grandchildren make some lovely hat pins like this one:

In addition to a pair of mittens that year, I bought this hat pin, which has been on my classic wool "house-is-cold" wool hat ever since.

 But back to today's hat:

 

Recently, I acquired a "new" winter hat that needed some embellishment -- So I was looking for You Tube tutorials that explain how to make these kinds of shabby chic flowers.  It's easier than I ever thought!

By the way, that bit of blue silk is a scrap left over from my wedding dress back in 1999.   The button is from my button stash. 

Here are a few videos and the ones I used as references:

From Little Hive: 7 Different Styles of Fabric Flowers.

I was planning to work through more than 1 style, but I was so happy with the layered yo-yo, that I stopped there.  ;-) 

The other videos, I'm listing here for safe-keeping, in case I do want to revisit these again in future.

 

Satin Velvet Fabric Flowers 

 

 

Easy Shabby Chic Fabric Flowers for Spring

 

As a quilter, I don't quite feel like I have the right stash for making these flowers.   Quilt fabric is a little heavy to put to these purposes.  I really like that satin knot flower above ... maybe in a rich green satin?

 

Yes-- I'm on a stay-vacation this week, so I have a little more time than usual to do and make.  I think I'm procrastinating on a larger quilt that is the real project I had planned to work on this week.  But here I am working on yo-yo flowers instead!

Carding an Art Batt

Freshly carded art batt, looking very much like a cocoon!

Sometimes crafting is like "shaving yaks."  In order to do one thing, you need infrastructure to support it, which means you have to get other things ready before you can "do the thing."

Before I can spin an art batt, I have to have an art batt to start with.  Fortunately, I was able to order a few online to get me started.  So I can study how it comes out, the structure, the color and texture mixes, what fibers and in what proportion ...  Then comes collecting and gathering your fibers.

I ordered a couple finished art batts from Wild Thyme.

I ordered the ingredients from Big Sky Fiber Arts.  They send a bag of mixed fibers in different color ways.  I ordered purples and greens.

This is how they looked released and unwrapped from the bag.  It still needed to be carded together.    Really a nice combination!    Ah-- but how to do that without blending all the fibers into mud?

 One of the videos I watched recommends layering your chosen fibers into a sandwich, that you can then feed into your carding machine. 

Here's the first batt.

You can see this one rolled up into a rolag at the top of this post.  

Here's the second one.  This one is a little more blended -- like a landscape.

I kept trying to feed in the fiber that was sticking to the intake roller, and things got progressively more mixed.  I am looking forward to spinning these batts!

For my own reference, I am also adding some of the videos I watched to learn this technique:



Fortunately, there are some great how-to videos out there on YouTube.  I found this one by Ashley Martineau where she uses a sandwich technique that seemed to get good results.



Here's another one where she uses a "painterly technique" where she bypasses the intake roll, and just "paints" the fibers on the top roll.




Here's one from Blue Mountain Hand Crafts.  I am intrigued by the "fiber salad" she starts with and the beautiful batt that results!

Here's a tutorial from Staunch Fibers:
How to Give Forgotten Fibers a Bat-tacular Makeover.

Fiber-in-Form Class : Adding Color

I know the class has been over for weeks already, but I'm still puttering away at the lessons.
I finally broke down and bought some of these Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints everyone was raving about. There were a bit pricey, but I have to say : Now I know how Lynda and Carol get some of the wonderful results they get. It's these magic paints!



The beauty of these paints is that you can layer them one on top of the other and they still let the "deeper" colors show throgh. Does that mean they're transluscent/transparent? The paints do all the work. They also stay fluid at 40 degrees Fahrenheit (which is the current temperature in my basement wet studio).

Here's what I did with them (These are all postcard-size samples.):

Gauze, PVA glue on canvas with Golden Fluid Acrylic paints. The interference Oxide Green gives it the BLING as the top coat. It seems to be a bronze base paint with some kind of iridescence in it. Very nice!


Wallpaper scraps, gauze, PVA Glue and paints.


Wallpaper scraps, Gauze, PVA Glue, paint on canvas.


Wallpaper scraps, Gauze, PVA Glue, paint on canvas.


Molding paste on canvas, Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints


Wallpaper scraps, gauze, PVA glue, ink, acrylic paint (NOT Golden Gluid Acrylics this time)


Wallpaper scraps, Gauze, PVA Glue, paint on canvas.


Wallpaper scraps, Gauze, PVA Glue, paint on canvas.


Wallpaper scraps, Gauze, PVA Glue, paint on canvas.


Molding paste through a stencil on canvas, Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints.


Molding Paste pressed and pulled on canvas, Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints.


Molding Paste pressed and pulled on canvas, Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints.


Molding Paste pressed and pulled on canvas, Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints.


Molding paste on canvas, ink, Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints

Molding Paste on canvas, Golden Fluid Acrylic paints.