Stumpwork Assessment Piece 2 - part 2

Ok, time for your next installment of this project. Making the background; this was fun, and didn't take as long as I thought it would.
Dying the background fabric


Time: ½ hour plus 2 days drying

Materials used:

• 12 inch square of pre washed calico.

• 4 bottles of Ozecraft colour dyes ; Brown, Green, Luscious Lime and forest green – 10ml of each colour, and 50ml water

• Various sizes of leaves; sticks from the ground.

• Glad wrap (Cling wrap), rubber gloves, hanger for dying. Sunlight

Get together all supplies and working in a wet area (somewhere where it doesn’t matter if you get wet with paint). Mix all three green coloured dyes together and water in a small tub. Pre wet calico (making sure it’s already been prewash). Soak Calico in solution, so that the colour gets into the strands.

Whilst you’re soaking the calico sort out your leaves, large, small, get rid of any dirt.

Place dyed wet calico over a backing material, I used an old floor mat. Then place leaves as random as you like. Once your happy with your layout, cover with glad wrap, this is more to keep in place than for any other purpose.

Place in full sun and let the sunlight do its job. Allow to dry a day in the sun, covered in glad wrap (plastic) so not to blow away.

Next day remove plastic cover and spray with a darker colour dye. I used brown in a pump action spray bottle. Recover and allow material to dry one more day in the sun.

The finished piece, should have a green coloured background with brown flecks and shadowed gum leaves.

This was the larger gum leaves, which I will be using for my piece.

This is the smaller leaves and sticks, I will use this for another project.

I used a hot iron to heat seal the colour, but also to press any creases out.  I was extremely happy with my results.

If you want to follow my journey on making this piece, watch this space.


Part 1 - Ideas and inspiration

Part 2 - Making and preparing the background fabric.

Part 3 - Making Gumnuts, blossoms, leaves, log and branches.

Part 4 - Attaching elements to background

Part 5 - Rosey, Kookaburra and insects

Part 6 - Attaching Rosey, Kookaburra and insects

Part 7 - Finishing Touches

TTFN

Arlene