Lavender and rust art quilt – finishing and framing

When last we met, I had printed and quilted an art quilt from a blended collage of my photographs of a lavender flower and a piece of rusted machinery.  Here’s a photo of the quilt, and this is the post about the process :

Lavender and rust art quilt

Finishing and framing a piece is always a challenge for me. Since I used new techniques and products for the quilt (more about that later!), I wanted that novelty to be reflected in the way I framed it.  Rooting around in my supply closet, I found wooden framing stretcher strips about the right size.  When assembled, the frame was a bit larger than the quilt.  To finish the plain wood in a manner that would reflect and honor the quilt, I printed some of the elements of the lavender and rust collage onto Transfer Artist Paper (see my earlier posts about TAP), and ironed them onto the front of the frame.

TAP on frame

My next challenge was how to attach the quilt to the frame.  I decided to use some kind of ribbon that I would sew to the quilt and thread through screw eyes attached to the inside edge of the frame.  It’s not easy finding good screw eyes! My local fabric store didn’t have anything I liked, and I had to visit three hardware stores to find the size and color that I wanted. I put screw eyes in each of the four sides of the frame.  This is the top right edge, showing the screw eye:

Ribbon and screw eye attachment

I decided that instead of using premade cord or ribbon, I would make it myself.  I started with the image that I used for the quilt and designed ribbons, but rescaled to be much smaller because the ribbon would have to fit  through the screw eyes. I printed it on the fabric that I had used for the quilt and doubled the fabric over so both sides would have a pattern.  I cut thin strips and stitched down the center of each to hold the sides together.  I threaded them through the eyes and tied knots, working with each to get the quilt centered in the frame. This is a closeup of the ribbon at the center right side of the frame:

Ribbon tied through screw eye

And this is the quilt tied to the frame at the six eyes:

Quilt in frame

The last challenge: how to hang the framed quilt? I didn’t want to string a wire across the back because that would show through the gaps. I couldn’t use a sawtooth because the gallery that I show my work in (a plug here for the Pinole Artisan galleries) doesn’t allow those. I decided to echo the screw eyes used on the inside, and put two at the top of the frame.  I made another long ribbon, threaded it through the eyes, doubled it over and stitched it together. The framed quilt now hangs flush against the wall from a hook or nail. This is it:

Hanging framed art quilt

If you’re wondering about the back of the frame, it’s nothing fancy. I finished it by painting the plain wood with a few coats of white gesso.  I solved the eternal question of how to sign an art quilt (many people print labels on fabric and sew them to the back), by signing the gessoed surface with a pigment ink pen. This is how the back looks:

Back of the quilt

If you’re wondering where the piece is now, it’s hanging in the new show at the second Pinole Artisans gallery, Pinole Art Center Too, 2814 Pinole Valley Road, Pinole California.  Email me at heidirand@gmail.com if you would like to know when the Center is open, or when I’ll be working there.

Next: the exciting story behind the fabric that I used for this quilt!

Lavender and rust art quilt

Native Plant Fair and Sale October 10-11

Fawn lilies

The East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society will host their Fourth Native Plant Fair and Sale at the Native Here Nursery, 101 Golf Course Drive in Tilden Park, Berkeley.

Other than a wonderful selection of local native plants, there will be local photographers and craftspeople with native and nature-related arts and crafts. This event is a major source of funding for the East Bay CNPS.   Over twenty people volunteer regularly at the Native Here Nursery, open year round to benefit the chapter through sales of local native plants.

Fair hours are 10 am to 3 pm on Saturday, October 10; noon to 3 pm on Sunday, October 11.
I will have a table both days with a large selection of my original arts and crafts works, including many new prints of native plants and butterflies, my fabric art, tile boxes, and much more!

Printing with Golden’s Digital Grounds on Lutradur

I made a blended photo collage from my photographs of a hen’s feather and a white phalaenopsis orchid. The end design is abstract, although you can see the feather shape repeated three times in the center of the piece. I shifted the colors to get subtle golds and shades of blue.

Phalaenopsis and feather collage

I prepared a piece of lutradur for inkjet printing by coating it with Golden’s Digital Ground matte (see my posts about lutradur and digital ground), and printed the collage. I backed the print with thick Pellon interfacing, and sewed along some of the lines of the image.

This is the printed/quilted piece (it’s 5 by 7 inches):

Phal/feather collage on lutradur

This is a closeup of part of the lutradur print, to show the quilting:

Phal/feather collage printed on lutradur and quilted

I decided to finish the lutradur print by mounting it to a 9 by 12 inch canvas board.  To enlarge the phal/feather image so it would fill the blank portions of the board, I printed segments of the image on Transfer Artist Paper (see my posts about TAP).  I transferred the segments to the canvas board with my iron set on the cotton setting.

Phal/feather collage, TAP on canvas board

This is a closeup of one of the corners.  The TAP transfer to the cotton board resulted in a pleasing texture, and the abstract nature of the design worked well with the transfer, I think.

Phal/feather collage - TAP on canvas

When the weather permits, I will spray the piece with fixative (probably Golden’s new archival varnish because that was designed for use with digital grounds prints).

The end piece, with the lutradur adhered to the center of the canvas board, will look like this:

Phal/feather collage, lutradur and TAP on canvas

To hang, I will probably drill two small holes near the top of the piece and string with metal chain.  Alternatively, I might put the piece into a frame.    I finally decided how to hang the piece!  I  drilled two small holes near the top.  I wanted to reinforce the holes, but normal eyelets aren’t long enough to go through the canvas board and grab onto the other side.  The only grommets I could find were much too large for the effect I wanted.  I finally found some slightly longer eyelets and set them.  I debated stringing decorative chain or wire, but dug out some raw leather cord I have, and decided it worked well with the tone of the piece.  I’m very happy with it now, see what you think.

Upper corner of piece with leather cord as hanger

Completed piece, with leather cord as hanger

Photos on metal, part 1

I love using metal in mixed media works: beads, wire, wire mesh, metal embossed with designs or letters, brads, etc. …..   I used a couple of different techniques on this box:

Hidden treasure box

The box has strips of copper sheeting on the top and bottom front which I embossed using a stencil.  The word “hidden” along the side is metal mesh which I embossed using metal letters.  I also put metal letters spelling “treasures” along the right side.  The image is a heat transfer of a double-exposure photo I took of myself awhile ago (pre-digital, when double exposures were harder but really fun).

Ah, but photos on metal — so many possibilities, but also difficult.

I started out trying some inkjet lazertran on metal.  I got a few rolls of copper and aluminum sheeting made by Artemboss.  You can find it at Michael’s, but I got it at a better price through misterat.com  This metal is soft enough to cut easily and I really like working with it.  I didn’t have much success with the lazertran, unfortunately.  With inkjet lazertran, if you want the surface of your substrate to show through where your image would be white, you have to clear the white with either turpentine or a substitute.  My aim in putting a photo onto metal would be for the surface to show through, so I did need to use the turpentine.   My results weren’t good – my edges curled, I used too much turpentine and some of the image dissolved, the end image was kind of chalky. 

I next tried using a heat transfer, the same t-shirt transfer material I wrote about earlier for putting photos onto tile.  I use Epson transfers with my Epson 2400 pigment printer.  The results were much better than the lazertran.  Here’s an example:

White phalaenopsis orchid

This is an Artemboss copper sheet with a heat transfer of my photo of an orchid.  I worked with the image so it’s softer than a straight photograph.  The heat transfer process doesn’t work well with sharp detail, so I chose a soft image, and I like the effect here.  The colors of the heat transfer aren’t as saturated as a straight photo, but here my aim was the contrast between light and dark, and that worked fine for me.  I also did some random embossing on the metal sheet and then attached it to a piece of wood with nails.

To print my transfer, I reversed the image (there wasn’t any type or lettering, but I decided to keep the orientation as I had shot the image).  I used the matte black ink and the enhanced matte paper and “best” settings.  I set the metal sheeting on a hard even surface (not an ironing board) and set the iron on its highest setting (don’t have water in the iron).  You really need some heat-resistant gloves to handle the metal, because it gets very hot.  Place the heat transfer face down on the metal, exactly where you want it — any movement will blur the image.  I put a sheet of baking parchment between the iron and the transfer, and held the iron down in one spot for a few moments.  Don’t move the iron – pick it up and place it on another spot next to the first spot.  If your iron has holes in it, make sure you’re overlapping so you don’t leave any spots untransferred.

It takes awhile to transfer to metal. You just have to peel up a little bit of the edge of the transfer to see how you’re doing, and you can then place it back down and keep ironing until you have as much transferred as you want.   There’s usually a small ghost image remaining on the transfer paper, as with the tiles.

Printing on fabric

When I began printing on fabric a few years ago, the main product available was Bubble Jet Set 2000. You had to soak fabric (only cotton or silk) in the BJS, air-dry it thoroughly, iron it to freezer paper, and then you could print on it. You also had to apply an after treatment. I didn’t have much luck with BJS. I printed some silk scarves and some cotton squares, but had trouble with blurry patches and inconsistent results.

Luckily, other products quickly began appearing that worked better for me. Although the pre-treated fabric costs quite a bit more than treating my own fabric with BJS, the results were more consistent and saved me a lot of time and work (ironing, yuck!). The main benefit of BJS is that you can cut your fabric to the size you want, constrained by your printer’s specs, of course, and the size of the freezer paper or other backing. You can buy pre-treated fabric at sizes larger than letter size, but it gets very expensive.

For pre-treated fabric, I started out with rolls of silk and cotton made by Blumenthal, which the JoAnn’s store near me carried at the time. Every time I got a 40% coupon, I’d buy a roll, which made the price of the roll reasonable. I used a lot of the silk rolls for scarves, and used the cotton for purses. At the time I was printing the fabric on my Epson 1280, but soon realized that I needed to change to the 2400 for the pigment ink. The 1280, a wonderful printer, uses dye inks, which fade over time and wash right out of fabric if you don’t treat it. Eventually my local JoAnn’s stopped carrrying the Blumenthal rolls. Maybe they track whether people ONLY buy certain high-priced items using coupons, and if so, stop stocking those items. In addition, I was getting less-saturated prints on the Blumenthal fabric with my 2400.

Welcome

Double exposure self-portrait

You can see my photographs and original designs at my SMUGMUG GALLERIES .  My handmade artwork is available through my ETSY SHOP. You can also see a large variety of products with my designs on them (sneakers, ties, much more!) at my ZAZZLE GALLERY.  Interested in learning to print on fabric?  See my new ebook, Inkjet Fabric Printing, available through my ETSY SHOP or LULU.COM.    Email me at heidirand@gmail.com for more information.

Okay, I guess I’ll just jump into this.  Now, a quick introduction — I’m Heidi, a photographer lucky enough to be married to a wonderful, gifted naturalist, George, who has the most amazing green thumb and a vast knowledge about animals and plants.  So whereas I used to have to search for things to photograph, I’m now surrounded by a menagerie of animals, including turtles, hummingbirds, butterflies, squirrels, and much more … and a wonderland of orchids, roses, native plants, trees, and much more — just begging to be depicted in pictures.

George arising from the pond

This is a picture I took of George coming out of the pond in our garden that he restored.  A couple times a year he disrobes and mucks around in the pond, cleaning out the algae and upsetting the mosquito fish and goldfish.

All photographs and images on this blog are copyrighted. Please do not copy or download any of my images.