When I was working on this quilted hanging, one of my aims was to use felt as the wadding in a way that made its colour a central element of the design. I’m still thinking about that, so today I’ve been stitching some studies for my sketchbook pages for the April TIF challenge (changing a piece of fleece in as many ways as I can). I collected a pile of sheer fabrics of varying opacity and made a small sample of each, layered with some of the pink felt I’d already made.
The best silk I’ve found for this is silk organza (top right) – it’s what I used on the front of my hanging; though I think you can get silk net and I’d love to try that. The manmade fabrics at the bottom – nets, voile and organza – are the sheerest of the samples but I really prefer natural fibres (although I confess I went and bought the finer net and the organza specially for this at Reticule today!). It’s partly because I like the feel of natural fibres so much more, but also because so many manmade fibres are petrochemical based. I think if I were to use them extensively I’d look for them in secondhand clothes and recycle.
In the middle are the cottons – an organdie on the right, and on the left my favourite – cotton scrim. I just love the combination of the open weave and the distortion from the stitching and the way the felt shows through and is furrowed by the pull of the stitches.
I’m going to try a kind of nuno version on a partially felted base, and also with dyed scrim and different colours of felt.
And I just wanted to share these, because they’re so lovely…
Thanks for showing the samples. I too like the scrim and felt best. Much more textural.
The scrim sample lept out at me too – scrummy (or should that be scrimmy!!!)
A while ago on an idigo dyeing couse I put all kinds of fabrics in the vat including cotton wadding and organzas. Seeing your experiments ( what a great idea to put samples in a sketchbook) makes me want to get them out of the cupbard and experiment with layering again.
It’s really interesting to see your samples and how you make your choices.Thanks for sharing and the tulips are beautiful too!
I love your page of textural samples. Its a work of art in itself.
You will have such a useful set of samples form this TIF. Its sets me to thinking I ought to do something similar!
It’s wonderful to see you’re experiments, I had never thought of using felt in this way.
Caroline
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I love the sample pieces.I have seen work like this showing at the visual arts Scotland Exhibition in Edinburgh.