New textile mini project for me

As part of my teaching the City and Guilds Level 2 course I have been experimenting with some interesting techniques and materials. 

I wanted to try out free motion embroidery with painted quilting, appliqué, collaging dyed fabrics....and anything else that came to mind.

 Working on Egyptian cotton I painted a rough background for the soil section with Koh i noor intence dye colours. They are not washable in fabrics and the range of colours is not extensive within the 24 offered, but they are very easy to work with and rich. They come in a cute set of palates too, so that always appeals to me. The paints bleed here and I used this too my advantage to blend colours, I then added detail with a thicker paint when the wash was dry.  I used some dyed vintage linen type fabric to make the houses and bondawebbed them on too.

 I knew I wanted to use some of my colour catchers gathered from the washing machine, they collect the colour and dye spinning around in a regular wash and save the whites from going grey, so they are subtle shades of greys, blues and pinks - perfect for my Northern sky. I set some bondaweb strips in the sky to catch some of these cut strips of colour catcher. I also stitched through some white organza so that I could burn away some sections later if the mood took me.

I had sketched out out my ideas for detail with my Frixion pen, the one that irons away later. and set to work going over the lines with free motion stitching. I backed the work on a piece of Ikea blanket for a bit of cheap wadding and depth.

Back to the painting: I painted in the quilted sections with the Koh i noor again. You have to be careful that it is not too wet for this bit, painting away from the stitching also helps cut down the bleeding of the colours. I decided to make it washing day and also thought that their quilts and rugs needed a good airing so they hung on the line too.

This picture is quite a jump now, I've added some dyed braid, started with some embroidery over the vegetables and painted the field behind the houses to set off the laundry on the line.

There is still work to be done I think but I am quite liking the overall effect now I spent some time with this sample.

You can just see some more painting at the bottom of the picture, I am now thinking how this might work with blending the next section of my quilt from below.

Coal. 

But thats another story.....