Enoki, Step 2

I began this little project yesterday by painting the Evolon all over in a swirl of pale yellows and pinks . I had already fused Steam a Seam Lite to the back side. Then I drew my Enoki on the back side of the piece on the SaS paper and cut the whole thing out. Last night, the last thing I did was to outline the individual fungi with a brown fabric marker.

Today, I mixed up several sorts of paints- regular craft acrylic, Setacolor and finally, just for a giggle, Dye na Flo. The Dye na Flo DID work but the colours were far too strong. Setacolor and acrylic worked fine, as I knew they would so I experimented with colours and got a nice pinky,purply,brown and watered it down to several different consistencies. I painted my fungi- shadows, deep shadows and highlights and then ironed over the whole thing when it was pretty dry. Finally, once I was fairly satisfied, I removed the backing paper and fused the whole to the background fabric- a nice pinky, greeny mottled hand dye. The result is as follows....

 I cropped this neatly for displaying the pic on my blog but the raggedy edges are still on and I will trim it to 12"x12" eventually. It SHOULD look about like this in the end.

I will play with some stitching and the quilting and will do any paint touchups as I see fit- e.g.- that little stem at the bottom right that runs off at an angle. It is too pale and I MAY add a bit of paint to tone it down a bit IF I keep the whole stem. It may get lopped off when I trim. You could start to bet now if you wish! Will she keep it? Will she prune it off?

Enoki

I am fond of grocery stores! I am particularly fond of fruit and vegetable markets. When my daughter and I used to shop together she despaired of my always having my camera in my purse and snapping pictures of the produce. She KNEW the picture would end up in a sketchbook or a quilt some time. Well, look what I found a few weeks ago! Is this not a stunning design !!

They are , as you can see, tiny Enoki mushrooms. I have never tasted them but they fascinate me nonetheless- fascinating fungi! I have finally finished the little mini quilt for the SAQA auction and sent it off on its merry way this afternoon :-( ( I liked that little piece!) and , although I thought I was done with mini, here I am again. I painted some Evolon the other night to use for the fungi and found a piece of nice mottled hand dyed fabric to use as the background. Here is where I am now...

I have cut the enoki out after drawing them on the back side of the Evolon on the paper from the Steam a Seam that I fused onto the back first. I now have fusible fungi!! I used a brown fabric marker to separate the individual mushrooms and will now paint in the detail, the highlights and shadows and then stitch around the mushrooms and then do the rest of the quilting. I THINK I can pull this off??? Stay tuned. I have to experiment with the paint and decide if I should fuse the fusible fungi first or paint first, fuse later. As I said earlier, stay tuned! Did I mention how much I love the look of these fun little fungi?
I will post this to the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com  It looks like the start of an interesting week there. Drop in and see what is going on and add your WIPs!

As Promised

Here is the Plane Tree Bark- not trimmed, not mounted, but done--- I THINK ! In " real life" , it is better because you can really see the peely layers.This little piece is mainly layers of Dupioni silk, heavily machine stitched with painted Evolon, organza and the odd bit of commercial cotton batik. now it needs finishing !
_______________________________________________________________________________
AND, NOW- FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT .....

 ...the first dye experiments. Above, what I was aiming for.

To the left, serendipitous rosy magenta as a result of not a tight enough scrunch and too much magenta dye- but OK.








And here- more of what I was aiming for. All in all, for the first dyeing I have done in YEARS, quite pleasing and usable for sure. Now, for the greens- but maybe not till I get the tree up and decorated and some honest to goodness housework done. Might even bake a cookie? Stay tuned :-)

Note re: Procion MX dyes- I LOVE the fact that this stuff is more granular than it used to be. It does not seem to fly everywhere as it once did- mainly straight up my nose! I did wear a mask though  which I never used to : -(