Artful Fibers Challenge

I recently responded to a call-out by C&T Publishing Company to create a project from their new "Artful Fibers" package, which will be available for purchase from their catalog or website in 2012. 

I received an intriguing assortment of fiber goodness to play with!

• Silk,  Silk Linen, Linen Silk Blend fabrics (approximately a fat eighth of each)
• Shape-flex – all purpose woven fusible interfacing.
• Bamboo Batting
• Fusible Web
• Spunbond - a strong, water resistant interfacing. It offers interesting effects when painted.
• Silk Cocoons
• Silk Roving – this can be felted, spun, painted etc.
• Silk Rods

Everything was white or in its natural color- meaning that I had to get busy with some paints!

First, I painted the silk fabrics with Setacolor paints.  Some of them enjoyed a little sun printing.  The Linen-Silk blend was my favorite.  I used a cool floral or sunburst stencil and some tiny flower petals.  I used three colors of paint in buttercup, vermilion, and cardinal red.

It came out like this.  A bonus piece of fabric was created from the dropcloth, because the paint was absorbed through the silk fabric!

I also painted a more purplish mix cardinal red, violet, and fuchsia.

The third piece, which was pure silk, was painted with a cool combination of Pernod Green, moss green, and emerald green.  I sprinkled some marigold leaves over the wet fabric.

When the paint was dry, I did some further embellishment with Lumiere metallic paint, stamps, and stencils.

Then I quilted each piece on my Janome 6600 sewing machine, with no backing fabric, just batting.  I love to do free motion quilting!  I added in some ribbons.  These became journal covers!

I used fabric for the inside covers, and added some pockets for bookmarks.

 

I used some Setacolor-painted lace for a couple of pockets.  The bookmark is the Spun-Bond interfacing, which does not need to be finished.  I just painted it with Lumiere and cut it with a rotary cutter.  A heart-shaped punch and some sari ribbon finished the bookmark.

Here is the inside front cover of one journal, with a corner pocket and another bookmark.

   

I dyed some of the silk roving with Kool-Aid, and felted it to make a flower for the bookmark.

The pages of each book were made of painted watercolor paper or coordinating scrapbook paper.  I used ribbon or embroidery floss to bind the signatures to the fabric covers.

 Some of the pages were trimmed with ribbons, lace or other embellishments.

Two of the journals are tied with silk sari ribbons, and one features a latch made of some funky fabric I made a long time ago from needle-felted plastic bag with lots of machine stitching.

I wrote a tutorial for these fabric journals, which C&T may choose to use on their blog at some future date.  It was a lot of fun to play with the Artful Fibers!

If you would like to become a member of C&T's Creative Troupe and participate in future call-out challenges, just apply online.  There are lots of benefits to being a member!