What a month it has been! Thank you so much to those who have offered encouragement and comfort.

Next Monday I begin training for a full-time position with a technical company.

I don't know what it will mean for my artwork. I'm praying for a happy heart—to be where I'm suppose to be.

This change could not be anticipated, but after a client let me work on a project for a year, released the product and then did not pay me (and will not pay me), I'm in the position of needing employment with a steady income.

Heavy heart.

Eyeglasses cases

I was busy this weekend—actually just Saturday, making about a dozen of these beautiful pieced eyeglasses cases. From scraps. Of gorgeous rust-dyed fabric. With Earth Safe Finishes Shimmer Opaque paints stenciled on them.

They used stencils/templates from The Crafter's Workshop, of course, plus gold and/or copper Opaque Shimmers for a permanent metallic effect on the cotton fabric.
The texture is from converging and diverging rows of straight stitches worked through the top shell layer and the batting layer.

I love the way the black polished cotton sets the whole composition off and the beads add texture without overwhelming the front of the glasses case.

I could never be a production worker; I hate to make two of anything exactly alike. Hence, the unusual stitching on the front and back—and the hand-rusted fabric ensures each will be unique.

This one was suppose to have picture-Jasper heart beads, but the eye of the needle was too big to fit through the hole in the bead. The other choice was to use a smaller needle, but the eye of the beading needle is really small for sturdy thread!

Aren't the stylized butterflies cool? I love the way Opaque Shimmers makes them blend with the dyed fabric.

Although I like the black wedge in this one, it involved way too much math to figure out the angle of the black wedge and cut the other fabrics to match.

If you're interested, I have a pattern available for the eyeglasses case. Best regards, Beth!

Painted-and-stitched Canvas Brush Bag Tutorial

Aren’t these yummy? This is a montage of a few paintbrush bags I made for some artist friends as holiday gifts. I made 25, each one slightly different.

Grab some Earth Safe Finishes Acrylic paint, Fabric Magic, and your favorite Colorants and let’s get started!

Painting Steps

Mix white acrylic paint with Fabric Magic. About 2 parts paint to 1 part Fabric Magic. The textile medium helps the paint grip the fabric, flex without cracking, and makes it soft enough to stitch through later.

Slap some of the white paint on clean white 100% cotton canvas, denim, or twill.

Place a small amount of the white mixture in a small container. Mix a few drops of Colorant (in this case, yellow) into it and blend for a sunny yellow.

Swoosh some round-ish shapes randomly on the fabric. These will be flowers later.

Squeeze one or two drops of red-orange on each of the yellow blobs.

And smooth with a paintbrush in a C shape.

Stroke with the brush to blend the colors within the roundish yellow blob.

Using the same paintbrush, pick up a big of white paint and stroke it around the periphery of the roundish yellow blobs. It’s OK for them to intersect and overlap.

Add a little more white paint for highlights. Isn’t this easy? I used to think shading and highlighting were really difficult.

The last painting step is to flick and splatter white paint randomly over the entire surface.

Let the paint dry flat. Freezer paper makes a good work surface for this project. This is what my yellow/orange roses looked like after painting.

More Painted Canvases

Some of my artist friends and colleagues are men, so their canvases were more abstract and less obviously floral in nature.
Vines of purple flowers for an associated that loves purple and violet!!

I asked what their favorite colors were, if I didn’t already know. This chartreuse was fun to work with. Not usually part of my color palette.

The pink-and-coral roses were fun. Once the paint is dry, back the panel with fusible fleece. It will give the bag body and stabilizes the fabric for stitching.

Free-motion stitching is always the fun part for me. You don't have to stitch it if you don't want to, but I love the details the stitches add.
Once the piece is stitched, straighten the edges with a rotary cutter and round the corners on one end. This will be the bag flap.

Work satin stitches along the edges in contrasting thread. I really liked the look of black on the painted-and-stitched panel.

Assembly

Fold the squared end with right sides together; pin to hold in place. The pocket at the bottom is the bag and the curved part at the top is the flap.

Set the sewing machine for a straight stitch and stitch along one side, just inside the satin-stitched edge.

Anchor the beginning and end of the side seam. Repeat on the other side.

You might add a zipper, closure, or Velcro dot to secure the contents of the bag.

Each canvas made two bags. I loved the process and am planning to make more tomorrow, New Year's Day!

Want to see painting and sewing in a video? Let me know!!

So, I'm in the Rust-Tex booth at the Midwest Fiber and Folk Art Fair in Grayslake, Illinois, wearing a very plain old white men's dress shirt as a painting smock when we decide to art it up a bit. That meant my clothes were no longer protected.

Lois had me wear one of her rusted T-shirts to demo Earth Safe Finishes surface design on rust-dyed fabric—and I got a couple tiny specks of Colorant on the shirt. Now, we know Colorant is really permanent and I wanted to salvage the T-shirt, so I worked a patterned stencil on top of the boo-boos.

This was completed using two stencils from The Craftworks Studio: An open star template and a small Cosmic Swirls. I love the way the smaller stencil adds detail, texture, and pattern to the large star!!

The stencil paint was made with shaving cream squirted on a paper plate, three drops of Fabric Magic, two drops of crimson Colorant and two drops of red. The shaving cream has the perfect body for a stencil cream or screen-printing ink and it makes it really easy to clean the stencils!

I tried this same technique with an open paisley template also. Very KEWL! I'll take a photo today and post it for your enjoyment. :-)

Yahoo! It's finished!

We just finished a little booklet of recipes using Earth Safe Finishes products: Colorants, Fabric Magic, Tackifier, Extender, Hand and Brush Cleaner, and more.

It's free! Just click the link to the right and an automatic download of the pdf should begin.

Now, when you want hints and ideas about how to use the Colorants for paper or fabric, this little booklet will come to the rescue! You asked for it and we (finally) got it ready.

Next step will be the full book of project and technique how-tos!!

This is a small art quilt I finished several days ago. It is part of a series about childhood fantasies, a tribute to my mom who passed away just about a year ago. The piece consists of digital images printed on rust-dyed fabric, enhanced with Earth Safe Finishes paint mixtures and free-motion stitching.

The hanger is a piece of cold-forged copper tubing.

Fabric snippets on the right have been stenciled with gold paint mixture. The "grassy" area at the bottom is rust-dyed fabric with an over-wash of four green ESF Colorants, as it the tree in the top left corner.

The gold corona round the fairy is carefully brushed with a new recipe for metallic watercolors for fabric.

Her wings and garment are a pearl watercolor for fabric, used in two different concentrations.

Every time I work with Earth Safe Finish Colorants, I find new ways to use it! It's so versatile, it is really saving space in my studio. Using different base media, the Colorants can be rubber-stamp ink, fabric paint, stencil cream, screen-printing ink, watercolor, acrylic paint, paint for glass, metal, plastic, paper and so much more!

We're working on a recipe book, but I get so excited about the newest formula/recipe, I can't stop long enough to focus on getting it all down on paper! LOL! Any suggestions?

At this time last week I was in Chicago at Quilt Festival, in the Rust-Tex booth! The show was exceptionally nice and I loved using Earth Safe Finishes in interesting ways on rust-dyed fabrics.

Generally, I'm not a fan of stenciled images with large open areas, HOWEVER, this very-cool technique changed my mind in a heartbeat!

Last month at the California Association of Machine Embroiders, someone in class double-stenciled a paisley image that captured my attention. Demonstrating in the Rust-Tex booth gave me the time to try it myself—and I love it!

I'll put a step-by-step tutorial together today, if possible and post it so you can experience this awesome technique.

The example above is double-stenciled on a rust-dyed print fabric. All my calicos from the days of piecing “traditional” quilts are about to see the light again as rust-dyed backgrounds for mixed-media and art quilts. Can't wait to see where this will lead!

I also had the opportunity to play with Earth Safe Finishes Opaque Shimmers and metallic mica powders, using doodle templates from The Craftworks Studio as stencils.

The short explanation on this technique is that two colors of Opaque Shimmers are worked into the stencil and the area where the two colors meet is stroked with mica powder. What an effect! Wow!

This will have to be a step-by-step tutorial, also. It's really easy, once you see the steps.

This is the same stencil with the same color scheme worked on a dark background and a light background. Hope you like them!