Slow Cloth and Image Transfer

                                  My Juicer has arrived! But more of that in another post.

I hope you're all settling back down into 'Autumn Mode' - children back at school, new terms begun, holidays out of the way, yet blissfully we are not yet into counting 'shopping days til...'!

There was quite a bit of interest expressed about my fabric books in the previous post. Mostly, people wanted to know how I got the text and photographs onto the fabric. Well, I'm not a tutorial blog, and there are HEAPS of people out there better equipped to tell you how it's done, loads of books, and numerous youtube clips, so do avail yourselves of those for the real 'gen', as they say.

However I'll tell you how I did mine. First of all the Paper Bag Transfer. You've all seen those paper bags with patterns on, sometimes quite pale. Well they are printed using the final 'run-offs' of print runs, so as not to waste anything. And there is still some juice for us to make use of. Simply place the paper, print side down, on your fabric..use something fairly smooth, mine was old sheeting. Press with a hot iron, keep checking carefull to test 'done-ness'. You'll get quite a faded result, but I like it.

                                                          Just the effect I wanted.

For the other transfers I treated my fabric first with a solution called Bubble Jet Set. Use only cotton or silk, it won't work on synthetic fabrics. It comes in a 946 ml container, not cheap, but it does last, and you can re-use it, so it says. Made by an American firm, it is available to buy in the UK, probably from Art VAn Go, Cotton Patch or Rainbow Silks. Full instructions on the bottle. However, soak fabric in solution for 5 minutes, DON'T WRING, keep it flat and drip dry or blow dry.

Cut freezer papr to A4 size. Iron to fabric and cut fabric EXACTLY to size, removing any stray threads. Feed into your printer in the normal way. For this photo:

I simply laid the original onto the photocopying plate of my printer and pressed go. You can do this with any image, or a textile you want to photocopy and print onto fabric. You can also scan your images and save to your computer, to access later on. You can of course use any computer generated image or text.

For this little book I created paper versions of the pages by using rubber stamps and images /text from magazines onto A4 paper, and using this as my image to transfer. For blocks of text you either photocopy blocks of text, or type it out on your computer and simply print.If you know you are going to want to cut the text apart, then make sure you leave enough space between your lines of text. Here I've just used a block of text:

Here, however, I typed lines of text and spaced them out so I could cut them seperately.

Wash your printed fabric , each sheet seperately so nothing transfers between sheets. I have treated several pieces of fabric and stored them for ages, and it still works. If you are making something purely decorative you probably don't even need to use the solution. Have a try, experiment!

I was over at Jude Hill's lovely blog, Spirit Cloth, and remembered an ongoing project of mine. Jude is a great advocate of the Slow Cloth movement - google it, there's quite a lot of info about it. It grew out of the Slow Food Movement. Anyway, I began a few years ago collecting fabrics (any excuse) and stitching away by hand at a variety of little motifs and appliques. Who knows when it will be completed? It's a slow cloth! So here are some of the pieces waiting to be joined to their neighbours.

Its Working Title, is The Gypsy Quilt. Mostly very bright colours, cottons, silks, velvets...just a collection of lovely things and a wide variety of images and patterns. No plan in mind, it's just meandering its way along. Possibly it never will get finished, who knows!

On Saturday we are off to Ireland for a week, spot of fishing, spot of music, eating and drinking, sewing, reading, journaling, swimming, possibly a spot of walking too, you never know, but let's not be too hasty, eh? Going with good friends Mike and Lesley so double the enjoyment! Not sure I'll be able to blog from there, as am not quite up to speed with the technology..though I am getting there!

Happy Autumns to you all, and let's hope for a bit of an Indian Summer on the side!