How to: Use Markal or Shiva Paintstiks on Fabric

Markal and stitch over a Gelli Plate Print

One of my favourite colouring tools for fabric is Markal paintstiks.  They are oil based and are very opaque, so can be used over any colour, unlike dye or Inktense.  They come in both matte and iridescent which is a bit pearlised or slightly metallic.  Now I don’t do glitz, but for some reason, I love the iridescent Markal – they just bring a bit of a lift to the work.  Note: Markal and Shiva are the exact same things.

Some of my Markals and short stencil brushes

I recently wrote a how to use Markals with stencils, which is in the current edition of Popular Patchwork.  This is an abbreviated version of what is in the magazine.

Markals in Popular Patchwork

You will need fabric, stencil, Markals and a short stencil brush (a toothbrush is perfect).

My Markal Equipment

How to:

1.   Make sure that you have your table covered as Markals are very permanent!

2.   You need your fabric to stay put, so tape in place or use some spray baste, like 505.  You also need to hold your stencil in place over the fabric the same way.

3.   As the paintstik is oil paint, it will form a skin, which you have to remove to get to the paint, either by rubbing with a cloth or cut off with a knife.

4.   Load your brush with paint and apply to the fabric in circular motions.

Adding the Markal through a paper stencil

5.   The colours blend really well and I often add several colours in a piece.  Some people will blend the colours before apply to the fabric, I prefer to mix on the fabric so the blend is not too perfect.

6.   Leave to dry – be patient it takes a long time, like several days.  Once dried, iron the fabric between two layers of baking parchment to make the paint totally permanent.

Hand cut paper stencil

You can use bought stencils or cut your own.  I use both – I like the bought ones when it is something I couldn’t cut myself and The Crafter's Workshop ones have generous use policies, so I don’t need to worry about breaking copyright.  My own, I cut from heavy photocopy paper with a scalpel, normally through two layers so I have a spare version.  I have used freezer paper as it is good for positioning as you can iron it on to the fabric.  However, to my cost, I discovered that it does not peel off wet Markal paint – only use on bare fabric!

Markal on top of hand dyed and pieced silk

There are lots of different ways of using Markals, some more subtle than others, perhaps that will be for another blogpost.  

Stencilling through some sequins waste

Things to do with Gelli Plate Prints - 1 Sketchbook Covers

Since I started using a gelli plate a little over a year ago, I have created an awful lot of prints.  It is a rather addictive method of printing as each time I think of some small variation I can make which might make another interesting print.

So I have a lot of prints on paper and fabric.  What to do with them all?  I have turned some into pictures, mounted ready to be framed, some of which are at the Green Gallery at the moment in its Christmas Show.  But that still leaves a lot of prints.  Over a number of blog posts, I’m going to share with you some of the other things I’ve made from the prints, starting with turning them into sketchbook covers.

I love books of all descriptions and sketchbooks are fabulous due to their potential before they are drawn in and due to containing so many possibilities after they have been filled.    Having a pretty cover on the outside is nice, but often when you buy one with a printed cover, the quality of the paper inside is less good.  So I’ve bought some blank books, ones with good paper and covered them with a print on fabric to make the front cover more interesting.  I took them along to the Primary School Christmas Fayre at the weekend and they generated a lot of interest.

Sketchbook in the photos below

How to:

1.   Measure the size of the cover (I used mainly A5 landscape books),  and cut a piece of medium weight iron-on Vilene and wadding about a 1/4in bigger than you want, if you are going to stitch heavily as it will pull the fabric in.

2.   Iron the Vilene onto the back of the wadding and place your fabric gelli plate print on top, making sure it is at least an inch bigger all around.  Pin in place.

From the back after stitching

3.   Stitch as you want.  I filled in parts of the pattern and created raised areas by stitching heavily around them to flatten the surrounding parts.

4.   Press flat, then wrap the left hand edge round to the back.  Press in place for a nice, sharp crease.

The left hand flap folded over to the back

5.   Glue the flap in place.  I use decent PVA glue.

6.   Spread PVA around the edge of the Vilene and the flap, centre on the sketchbook cover and press firmly in place. 

7.   Open the cover and glue the corners of the fabric over to the inside first, then all the way round, pulling tight as you go.

Fabric glued down over to the back of the cover

8.   Cover with wax paper (it won’t stick to the glue) and then weight down with books whilst it dries.

9.   Either glue the first page of the sketchbook over to the inside of the cover or use a paper gelli plate print to hide the edges of the fabric and to give a neater finish.  Cover with the wax paper and weight it down again whilst the glue dries.

Simple really, but rather effective.  Have you come up with other ways to use gelli plate prints?

How to: Block Printing

Popular Patchwork - Nov 15

I love exploring techniques that I haven’t used for a while and finding new ways (at least to me) of using them.  In this month’s PopularPatchwork (November 2015) is an article I wrote about block printing. 

Popular Patchwork - the project

It was great fun to make the samples and to explore what I could do, especially as I was constrained (for this feature) only to use bought blocks, not ones I had designed myself.

These blocks were just gorgeous to look at - and to work with

To this end, I had a lovely box of Christmas stamps from Colouricious to play with.  If you have time, it is a very pleasant way to spend a few hours and you can make some lovely, unique cloth that you can use to wrap Christmas presents.  If you have quilter friends, the fabric itself would make a fantastic gift. 

My equipment, including the all important cup of coffee

All you need are the blocks, fabric, a sponge and some paint.  I used a mixture of textile paints and standard acrylics.  To be honest, there was not much different in the handle of the fabric between either of them, but perhaps the textile paint will be more permanent, especially if you are going to wash the fabric.  As most of my fabric is used for wall hangings, this is not something I spend much time worrying over.

Creating a pattern

On some pieces, I just kept overprinting, in different colours, which produced some interesting results.  On others, I tried making patterns.

Usings the printed fabric as wrapping cloths

Another way of printing, which also gave good results was to spray the block with water and then rub with an Inktense stick, before pressing it on the fabric.  Full details are in the article.

Using Inktense and a different type of block

I’m also running a one-day class in block printing on 6 November and there are still some places if you are interested.  We will be making and designing our own blocks, using foam, so you could create your own Christmas wrapping fabrics if you wished.  Email me for more details or visit the website.

Fabric printed with Inktense

9 Top Tips for Getting the Most Out of a Museum Visit

How to make the most of a museum research visit as a quilt artist

Floating heads by Sophie Cave

Following on from the first weekend of the C&G Certificate in Patchwork and Quilting 10 days ago, last weekend was the first weekend of the Diploma (more advanced) class.  It was lovely to see some familiar faces who had undertaken their Certificate with me at the Loch Lomond Studio and to meet the new students.  Our two topics for the weekend were research and playing with mixed media.  Permission to play is very important!

Urn from the Early People's Gallery

As part of the research, we made a visit to the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow.  If you haven’t been, it is well worth a visit.  The breadth of the collection is huge and there is always something I haven’t noticed before that takes my interest.  Which is why we were there.  As part of the Diploma, each student has chosen their own subject matter for research and I was hopeful that the Museum would have something to interest everyone.  I decided I didn’t want to put them off research by taking them to a specialist museum, although I think you can (virtually) always find something of interest no matter how unpromising the museum’s collection sounds.

Part of a very old boat

Although the members of this group, like me, were generally museum junkies, many newbie artists/quilters don’t visit museums regularly and some don’t know how to approach a visit to get the most out of it.  So here is some advice on things to do to get the maximum inspiration from a visit (and yes, quilters should visit museums and art galleries as well as quilt shows – perhaps more so)

From the Early People's Gallery.  I forgot to note down what this was as I was mostly interested in the detail than the whole object

1.   Look for an object or painting that relates to the subject that interests you.  Sketch it in two different ways (ie a line drawing, shading it, drawing with dots rather than lines).  Also you don’t need to draw the whole object – just the bits that matter to you – you’re doing research not trying to recreate someone else’s work.

Have I mentioned I like the Floating Heads by Sophie Cave?!

2.   Try out different media.  Draw an object/painting more than once using different implements such as pencil, pen, felt tip, Inktense, charcoal etc.  Get really adventurous and use several media on one drawing!  Before doing this, do check that the museum allows you to do this – some will only let you use pencils (so don’t forget the pencil sharpener and the eraser).

More Floating Heads

3.   Draw before photographing.  Yes, it can be intimidating, especially if you don’t think your drawing is any good, but remember most of the passers-by can’t draw any better than you, no matter how bad and it is a great way to start a conversation.  You will be asked lots of questions.  Why draw first?  So you commit the artwork to your memory, rather than to your camera’s memory.

4.   Find a work by an artist you haven’t heard of.  Think why you like it and find out more about her/him either at the museum or when you get home to see if you like their other pieces.

The Surprise Find - this is a Lowry and there isn't a matchstick cat or dog in sight

5.   Find an artist who creates work on the subject which interests you and look at how they have approached it – what do you like / don’t like.

Pattern on a Viking stone

6.   Look for five patterns you like.  This could be on the floor, the ceiling or on an ancient pot.  Obviously the number 5 is arbitrary, but having a goal is always useful.

View of the floor down one of the long first floor galleries

7.   Find a work you really dislike and work out what about it has triggered such a negative reaction.

I loved this work by John McLean, but many of my students were less keen on its 'naive' style

8.   Look in the bookshop – you may discover books that you didn’t know about or old exhibition catalogues of interest.

9.   Enjoy the cafe!  You will need a rest – your brain will become saturated, which is another reason to start with drawing first before this happens and before your feet get sore.

A detail of the building

I think that just about sums up how I tackle museum visits... in theory at least!  This time, I spent most of the day in the cafe, making sure that the students could find me if necessary.  When I did finally go for a wander around, I realised I was rather hungry and couldn’t concentrate on drawing, so just photographed instead, thus breaking my own golden rule.  However, I do have some plans to use the photos in the future.  Watch this space!

8 easy steps to a wonky-ish log cabin quilt

Friday’s class was all about Inktense and we had an interesting time exploring it on fabric and paper.  Yet again, I forgot to take any pictures.  Oops.  Must add it to my lesson plans to remind me!  This week is a design day, coming up with random ways to make unusual abstract quilts.  It’s going to be entertaining!

Apart from my classes and making new work, I’ve been rather occupied making a new baby quilt.  It is a while since I’ve made one and it was fun to be back making a more traditional quilt.  As you can see from the photos, the new baby is a girl (our great niece), which meant the quilt took a bit longer.  I have lots of blues etc I can use in a quilt, but absolutely no pink.  So a special shopping trip had to be made. 

Lovely view out of the window!

I love log cabin quilts and playing around with the format and this is what I did for this quilt.  It measures 36 x 48in and was made from only 9 fat quarters, including the binding.  Here’s how I did it (in a very quick 8 steps):

1.   Use one fabric for the centres and cut 12 3½in squares

Use one fabric for the binding and cut into as many 2in strips as you can get.  Join these strips together into one long strip, which can then be made into double fold binding.

2.   From the remaining 7 FQs, cut each one into a variety of 1½in, 2½in and 3½in squares.

3.   Choose the 3 lightest FQs and use these for the first two rounds of adding strips and use the remaining 4 for rounds 3&4.

4.   I tried to be organised so that no colour would end up being repeated in the same block, so each of the 3 lightest FQs were used on 4 centres each, varying the width of the strips.  Then each of these 4 centres had a different colour for rounds 3&4.  It sounds a bit complicated, but it is obvious when you are doing it.

5.   I made all the blocks at least 13½in square (I had to join a couple of smaller off cuts for the final rounds).  Some have two complete rounds, others three.  I then placed my 12½in ruler at an angle on the block and trimmed to size.

6.   The blocks were placed on my design wall and moved until I was happy with the arrangement and then I stitched them together.

7.   I followed the shapes of the blocks and free-machine quilted lines within them, before adding the binding.

quilt laid out on the floor

One very cute little baby girl now has her quilt to do with as she wishes, but hopefully she will have as much enjoyment as my kids have from theirs.  Even now, they are still on beds and are used as tents, rugs and princess capes!

How to: ice dye fabric

Iced dyed cotton

I’m sure that like me, most of us just want to see summer and enjoy some sun.  We’ve had some bizarre weather here recently: last week it was warm, dry and sunny; this week it is sleeting and pretty miserable.  I was too busy taking the kids sledging when we had a small amount of snow this winter to do any snow dyeing and as I was teaching a dyeing class last week, I thought it would be fun to try ice dyeing.  I know – it would have been more optimistic to do sun printing!

Iced dyed cotton muslin

I found a little bit on the web about ice dyeing, but not a huge amount of detail, so I thought I would share my experiences with you to add to the general knowledge out there.

Iced dyed cotton

You need a container to hold the fabric and ice and then something underneath for the excess dye water to run into so it doesn’t muddy the fabric.  Most people use some kind of rack over a sink, but I didn’t have a rack, so I used a foil tray bake tray in which I punched some holes with a scalpel knife.  It worked really well.  I balanced it over an Ikea storage box.

Iced dyed cotton

First I soda-ashed the fabric and it seemed to work better if you left the fabric wet rather than using dried fabric.  I placed this in the bottom of the tray, all scrunched up.  I poured a bag of ice over the top, making sure that the fabric was covered.  Some people use crushed ice, but these were cubes and I didn’t break them down.  Finally, gently pour some concentrated dye liquid over the ice cubes.  For one of the experiments, I sprinkled dye powder directly onto the ice, but I’m not particularly comfortable with having the dye particles floating around my studio and even after the ice had dissolved there were still some lumps of powder left.  I also don’t think the result was that different, so it is better to use the safer method.

Iced dyed cotton muslin using dye powder

And that’s it!  You just leave it overnight until all the ice cubes have melted and the excess dye has dripped through.  Wash the fabric out in cold water.  The excess dye is still good for dipping another fabric in and it already has soda ash in it.  That’s what I used for my original shibori dyeing.

Iced dyed cotton

The students on Friday also had a go and some of their results were fantastic.  I can’t wait to show them.  The next couple of Friday classes are Screen Printing on 1 May and Gelli Plate Printing on 8 May.  There are still a couple of places left so if you are in the area and want to join, please drop me an email or leave a comment.

How to: Quick Jelly Roll Quilts

The smaller quilt on the quilting machine

These quilts were made to accompany an article I'm writing for Popular Patchwork about group fund raising for charity, by having a race to see who can make their jelly roll quilt the fastest.  The winner gets half the entry fees, whilst the rest goes to charity.  The quilt top can easily be made in less than a day.  I heard about the ‘Jelly Roll Slam’ race when Ruth Higham held one at The Studio,Loch Lomond.  It is definitely possible to make this quilt top in a day; even I managed in under four hours and I am not known for speedy piecing.

 

The larger quilt

 To make the quilt top, you will need:

• One jelly roll and a fat quarter of fabric.

Cut the fat quarter into 21/2in squares. You will need one square for each strip.

To make the quilt:

• Stitch a square to the end of each strip.
• Join all the strips together at the short ends into one hugely long strip.
• Fold in half right sides together and stitch along the long edge.
• When you get to the end, cut the fold, fold in half again and repeat.
• Keep repeating until you have the shape of quilt top you want – that’s it!

Detail of the larger quilt

It really is amazingly simple.  If you don’t want all the squares to line up, you can offset how the strips line up when you fold in half for the first time.

The smaller quilt - I didn't realise that some jelly rolls have 30 strips not 40 - so watch out!

In keeping with the quick piecing, I ‘quick-quilted’ them at Beechwood Quilting on their long-arm machine.  They will be great for the kids to play with and to throw over the sofa. 

If you are part of a quilting group why not hold your own jelly roll slam? I’m all for finding new (and fun) ways to raise money for charity.

 

How to: 5 easy steps to make fabric beads

The other weekend at the C&G class we were looking at ways of embellishing your work.  As my work is generally unadorned and bling is a definite no-no, this meant lots of research for me.  This is one of my favourite parts of teaching C&G – I have a great excuse to go and look up artists and ideas and techniques and learn more myself.

One of the things I came across was making your own beads using straws (an article in a Quilting Arts freebie on embellishment techniques by Gail Ellspermann – you can get it here).  As I was looking quickly for lots of different ideas, all I took away was straws, fabric and glue and looking back at the article now, I’ve made mine in a completely different way. 

 

So to make my fabric beads, you need:

·         Small strips of fabric  approx 1-2in wide

·         Old threads, plain, fancy, metallic – whatever needs using up

·         Drinking straws

·         Pritt Stick style glue

·         PVA glue in a bottle with a nozzle (mine was Sainsbury’s own brand kids PVA)

·         Scalpel knife or very sharp scissors

They really are very simple to make, but I did find it quite addictive, making many more than I needed for the class and the artwork I’m going to put them on.

1.      Cover one side of the fabric with pritt stick glue.

Wrapping the glue covered fabric around the straw

2.     Stick this to the straw (below the bend if using a bendy straw or at least 2in from the end if not) at approx 45 degree angle.

3.     Wrap the fabric around the straw until you reach the end of either the fabric or straw.  Cut off any excess fabric

4.     Run a line of PVA glue down the fabric and then wrap the thread(s) you want to use down the straw, rubbing the glue in as you go.  Repeat at least twice with the glue, adding more thread if you want. Leave to dry.

Drying straws

5.     ‘Crack’ the pritt glue by gently squashing the fabric, then pull out the straw.  Cut to the desired size using a scalpel knife, and recoat each bead with PVA if need to make firmer or to tidy in ends.

Pile of finished straws waiting to be cut

As I said really easy!  To be contrary, rather than make them in lovely bright colours, I ended up wanting brown beads, although it is amazing how the colour is influenced by even the smallest amount of thread. 

Beads stitched onto my current work in progress

Have you made anything like these?  How have you used them?  The C&G class came up with some great ideas for embellishment and we sent them away to make an over-embellished sample.  I can’t wait to see the results next month.