Rusting Fabrics

I've been experimenting lately with rusting fabrics ... this is great fun and you get the most amazing patterns.
I tried to be clever with some of the pieces, as I felt some of them were a bit "in your face" with the stark white/cream background against the orange rust, so I decided to immerse the fabrics in tea to tea-dye the background. The result wasn't what I expected .... instead a grey/brown fabric.

The tannins in the tea worked against the wonderful orange/gold colours of the rust. Although it changed the visual context completely, it left something quite different and unusual in its own right, even if it wasn't was I had hoped for. Isn't that usually the way?!

Not sure what I'll do with these samples yet, but one of the larger pieces pictured below will be used in my wall hanging.

Don't think hubbies got anything rusty left in his shed .... I've ransacked it, dragged out anything rusty, covered it in fabric and sprayed it with vinegar, oh well - he needed a clean up in his shed anyway!

Transparent Fabrics

After a harrowing few months I'm now back into the swing of it and madly trying to catch up on lost time, throwing myself whole-heartedly into Module 8 : Transparent Fabrics, More Machine Techniques and a Working Design for a 3D item.
I spent the day holed up in my studio painting papers with transfer paints and crayola transfer crayons. Managed to make up over 50 papers .... some will come in handy in the future.

I used everything that I could find that could be described as a stencil of some sort, to try and give me as much variety in the patterns, as possible. Some worked better than others, depending on the fabric they were transferred onto.

I found that voile and nets were great, but crystal organza's blurred and didn't take up the transfer very well.

The transfer paints were great for stamping, and gave much brighter colours than what appears on the paper.

Rubbing mats were good fun to use with the Crayola transfer crayons, and the designs could be cut up and re-arranged.

I even tried the scrapbooking wooden motifs as stamps and stencils, they worked fine!

A productive day .... lets hope tomorrow is as good.