Sunday, March 25, 2012

Like I've never been away

Got home again late last night! Everyone was pleased to see me, and both the house and the children were in better shape than before I left. Australia has recently introduced a fancy electronic passport system - where you do-it-yourself through immigration - which chose yesterday to collapse in a heap. Hundreds if not thousands of grumpy travellers, including me, waiting in an enormous queue. At least I went through Brisbane and not Sydney, which is much busier and would have been a complete nightmare. This was the view from my room yesterday morning before I left...


I saw a technique again on a blog yesterday - where you stitch the outline in black thread then colour it in with a watercolour pencil - so thought I would give it a go this afternoon while the boys were at the airport open day. (I refused to go with them after spending far too much time at airports yesterday). I wet the stitching first with textile medium, which not everyone recommends, but it seems to work for me. Anyway, firstly I printed a picture (kid's colouring-in picture!) from the internet straight onto the fabric. It's very very faint....

Then I stitched it in black and did background quilting in pink. It's meant to look a bit like letters or writing. Not sure if it does.

Then coloured it in with the pencils. This was just a test piece so I used every colour in the box to see how they all went. Some better than others! It's an interesting technique but I'm not sure how I would use it. It doesn't really lend itself to bigger quilts without an enormous amount of work, and the colours weren't very intense. BUT that could be because I bought the cheap watercolour pencils instead of the more expensive ones. Frugality, my friend.


2 comments:

  1. I like that technique! Your background stitching does resemble letters, I thought that when I looked at the picture before reading that was your intention. So did you just go to the school supplies aisle at the store and get the watercolor pencils? Are these what we just call 'colored pencils' over in America? I have some of those. I'm guessing, though, that this is something you would do on a piece that would not get washed, am I right?

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  2. They're a special kind of coloured pencil that are soluble in water, so they kind of run when you wet them like watercolours. I got them at a local art supply shop, but just the cheap brand. In theory, by using the textile medium and then heat setting it, it can take "light laundering" - whatever that is!!! I don't know how much I would trust it!

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