Trish Stuart’s Blog

I’ve been working with wool recently. I LOVE IT! It is soft, so it sews totally differently than cotton. Those of you that have been into Penny Rugs already know this. I have two new patterns that will be ready for spring market in May using wool and applique. One of the things I have been doing is adding felting to it so I can “paint” the applique. Take a look.

Here is the image… I traced this Morning Glory to freezer paper so I could press it directly to the wool fabric. Makes it easy to cut out and it doesn’t hurt that these are large images, either.

This is the first step for this Morning Glory flower. I placed the cut out image face down on top of the stabilizer. This stabilizer is fabulous. It is dense enough and soft enough that it doesn’t shatter when I felt on it. You can cut it away from the back and leave it attached to the applique. I decided to peel the applique off and then I’ll sew it to the top. It peels off so easy! Really a nice product. I was glad I had a small piece of it to try out. I plan on doing embellishing with threads, too.
After I placed this face down on the stabilizer I layered some Tussah silk and iridescent Angelina over the open areas.

You can see the Angelina on the left, the Tussah over the Angelina on the right of the flower.

Some of this has been felted.

Here is the “right” side of the Morning Glory. You can see the Tussah and Angelina create their own “fabric”. Sometimes I think letting the background fabric show through the cut away areas is more attractive but I wanted to see how this would work.

Now I have added wool roving in a darker blue for some shadows.

Now I added some Fuchsia Roving.

Here it is pinned to the quilt top. I just sewed a different top, in different colors. I’m not sure if I like the brown base for this. We’ll see.

That’s not all I have been working on. I painted two images to fabric. These are done on fat quarters. I plan on quilting and embellishing them with threads, maybe some foil, crystals… who knows. I think it would be nice to add pieced borders. I may paint these again in a smaller size or in a longer rectangular shape. Tell me what you think!

These are Sitka Roses. Before I did any color I used Batik EZ from Craft Pick and stamped the fabric. This allowed me to add color and the Batik EZ acted as a water soluble (and removable!) resist.
I wet the fabric first, laid some ink on the fabric and sprinkled salt on it. Once it dried, I brushed the salt off and heat set it.
Then I sprayed the fabric with water and used the pens and the All Purpose Inks with the Fantastix applicators to paint the flowers and leaves. I wanted this to look like a watercolor. When I wanted to stop the bleed I used an embossing heat gun to dry the fabric. I could have just pressed it with an iron but I didn’t want to smush the ink and make it spread out from the weight of the iron.
I think outlining these and doing some intricate quilting in the background could make this fabulous. Plus, doing french knots for the little yellow doodads in the center of the flower should really add some neat texture.

Here is the wolf portrait.

This is a blend of fabric ink, watercolor fabric crayons, inktense pencils, stamps, Batik EZ and I think that’s all. Talk about mixing mediums. I’m interested in seeing how this looks once I add thread work.
If you haven’t tried the Batik EZ it is really fun. It looks like a clear glue so I was actually wondering if I could use rice glue instead but haven’t tried it. You should be able to find Crafter’s Pick products at any of the local craft and hobby stores. I had to go online and search for it.

Please let me know what you think. This is really new for me and I would love to interact with you!