A Whole Load of Samplers! The Fabrics.

I've been trying out my blocks and stencils on a wide range of fabrics. Here are a few of my favourites, along with the reasons why I've chosen them.

1) Blue Crushed Velvet
This is a piece of material from my collection of scraps. I printed onto blue velvet twice, as the first time, the blocks weren't quite aligned. I love the colour, and although the print itself wasn't intended to be on such a bright colour, I was surprised at the boldness with which the paint took to a fabric with pile. I went out to get some more crushed velvet in green after doing this print (more on that one later). As this fabric is a very stretchy variety of velvet, I used some drawing pins stuck into several layers of cardboard to be sure the paint wouldn't look too faint when the tension was relaxed.

2) Black Satin
This piece was made with the A3 stencil. I overlapped layers of sponged-on green, yellow and blue paints, keeping the rows visible. I made the overlapping more obvious at the lower edge, fading out towards the top. I was pleased with the fading effect, and with the smooth application of colour. When I say smooth, though, I mean that where it was applied in quantity, it was very obviously a block of colour. However, the wobbly outlines mean it's unlikely I'm going to choose it for the finish of this section. 

3) Black Velvet (two kinds)
Seen here are two examples of black velvet. On the left, the more expensive, softer kind. I only had a small scrap left for this example, so please excuse the size of the piece. On the right, the cheaper version. The left example is painted with a brush, and the right with a sponge.

To see this, you'll have to zoom in, but it has a lot of horizontal lines across it's width, which made for a very interesting effect. In Japanese Embroidery, so my book tells me, effects like this are really very desirable. The following picture from the book (I've referenced it before - this is from The Techniques of Japanese Embroidery, by Shuji Tamura, and not my own work) demonstrates the technique. It describes this as 'the technique of highest dignity'. I love the look of both kinds of velvet, and will be returning to it in future.

4) White Cotton
This sampler combines sponge-applied colour with black painted outlines. It has a mix of paler, calmer tones in the plain, printed leaves, and a more lively, sharper look to the outlined parts. It's come out well, though again, painting in a similarly thick outline around each leaf is quite time-consuming.

5) Black Velvet
This sampler, made with an excessive quantity of fabric paints applied 'neat' to the sponge, is probably my favourite production of the section so far. It's got everything: lovely colours, sharp, defined lines, a mix of flat colour and dappling, splattering effects, and a feel of distance in the black background. I will definitely be revisiting this one.

6) Green Crushed Velvet
The colour for this sampler is a much deeper green than it appears in it's photograph, and is almost the same as the earlier, blue crushed sampler, with one important difference. The green fabric lends a lovely silver sheen to the leaves, like real bamboo. Again, I'll have to revisit this idea on a larger scale.

7) Black Sinamay
Finally, a quick sampler that develops further on the Japanese Embroidery technique mentioned above where horizontal lines of colour form a shape. This fabric is sinamay, a kind of milliner's base fabric made, I believe, from the fibres of banana plants. I painted onto it on paper, then peeled it off and set it against some more black satin to show it off.