Discharge + Painting

I've been learning how to paint fabric with transparent paints. The only problem seems to be that I'm not overly fond of white backgrounds and anything else will show through the paint.

I decided to experiment with discharging some black Kona cotton and here is the result.

This particular black discharges to a lovely soft rust color. Because of this I chose to paint the flower in shades of orange. The discharge process did not result in an even color so the painting looks somewhat mottled, but I think it's interesting. I'd call it a successful experiment :-)

Lisa

Paper Pieced Faces

A few weeks ago I decided to experiment with a new name tag design. I have enjoyed seeing all the self-portraits people have made recently, but knew that realistically people wouldn't be able to accomplish that on the small scale of a name tag.

So I drafted these paper pieced wonky faces: short haired, long haired and medium haired. Fun?

Of course you have to add another piece of fabric at the bottom for your name which can be embroidered, printed or written with a permanent pen. And I wasn't able to add the eyes without making it too too complicated. Eyes could be drawn in, created with beads and/or sequins or you could add one of those little sunglasses pins 8-)

This is not a particularly easy pattern since the one on the left is created in 3 parts that are then joined. The other two are "only" two parts. But I saw that at least one class member had made her name tag just a week after I gave out the patterns!

I hope you like them!

Lisa