Daisy project

Eliza's painted Bondaweb

This week's project was inspired by Gwen Hedley's book 'Surfaces for Stitch'. I wanted to try the technique of painting Bondaweb as a way of colouring fabric. I had a 'stitch buddy' this week, Eliza, the 12 year old daughter of friends who stayed the weekend so in this blog I will show both our pieces.

My painted Bondaweb

We began by painting the Bondaweb with some watered down acrylic paints on the rough side. As the backing paper was still attached, it crinkled and made a rippled effect. You can use fabric paints too but acrylics were all I had and worked well.

Whilst the paints were drying we cut some calico for the backing fabric and a drew on it with Intense Pencils. Eliza drew a bee and I drew daisies and text. Then we cut a piece of plain Bondaweb and laid it on top. Onto this we put some daisies cut out of a piece of craft paper and decorative threads. We ironed this down between 2 sheets of Baking Parchment to protect the iron to make the background more manageable.

Eliza's background

My background

Then we ironed on the painted Bondaweb, which muted down the background a lot. On top of this Eliza made very neat coils of yellow wool for daisy centres and petals from embroidery floss. She ironed on each of these as she went. The Bondaweb can be reheated as many times as necessary, which makes it easy.

Eliza's piece ready for final ironing

Finally we added a layer of sheer fabric over the top to cover the applied threads and make the surface easier to stitch. It also gets rid of the plasticky feel of the painted Bondaweb surface. Eliza chose a gold shot organza. 

Here is her final piece. She hasn't decided whether to add any further stitching yet. It it beautiful and very impressive for her age. She really enjoyed doing this project.

Eliza's finished piece

In my piece I ripped out most of my daises and placed them randomly with threads on my background and bonded them down. Then I cut my painted Bondaweb up into blocks and ironed them down on top. Next I added further cut out paper daisies, decorative threads, squares of sheer fabrics, angelina fibres and some orange bag net. I placed a dark blue chiffon over the top and ironed it down. The daisies I drew on the calico have been obliterated!

My piece after final ironing

Where the chiffon went over the sheer squares it didn't bond down very securely so I added some stitching. Mostly I used free-machining to echo the daisies and thicker threads but I also added some machine-patterns to echo the orange bag net. My machine didn't like free-maching over the paper but it improved when I changed to a new needle.

My finished piece

I am very pleased with the final result. It looks intricate and interesting and I am inspired to create a larger wall hanging using the same technique.

Holiday drawings

Roda Beach, Corfu

Just come back from holiday. Before I went I treated myself to a tin of Inktense Pencils - water soluble ink pencils.

Here are the drawings I did - only 5 of them, which basically corresponded to days spent lazing on the beach or by the pool. I did enjoy experimenting with what these pencils could do.

All of these flowers were from the gardens surrounding the apartments and pool - I just sat in the shade and painted away. As you can see most of the flowers are a trumpet type so just getting the perspective on the petals to look realistic was a challenge in itself. I like the orange one side view and the pale pink ones the best.