Fiber Play Samples

Last week, I took a class called Fiber Play, taught by Francine Gnoccio (sp?) at Sew 'N Sew in Appleton, WI. I've been waiting over a year to take this class ... A day well spent experimenting!



(Above) Steam-a-Seam bonded to the wrong side of fabric with exposed fusible, layered with sheer ribbon (recycled after a party), art sticker sewn on top. On the right side, you can see some "dirt" : this is a metallic powder applied with a dry brush. It was an experiment that didn't work so well here, but may be a nice idea for other instances. This piece could easily be finished off and mailed as a fabric post card.



Needle-Felting by Machine
(Above) This is some work on the HuskyStar embellisher. This is a fun little machine -- like a sewing machine, except there is no thread, just 5-6 barbed needles that "marry" fabrics and fibers together by needle-felting.
The purple piece is silk, angelina and wool roving on purple silk.
The other piece needs a little more work, but I think you get the idea ...

I've considered using my sewing machine with a barbed needle to do this kind of work, but I've concluded it wouldn't be such a good idea. This process creates a lot of lint that could cause havoc with the inner workings of a good sewing machine. I have the little Clover tool for needle-felting by hand. It goes pretty fast as a process.



Angelina
Angelina never seems to photograph well ... If you want a little sparkle and glitz, Angelina may be just the thing! You can also trap snippets

Bonnie McCaffery has a short online tutorial on Tintzl, which is very similar to Angelina.

Snippets are the left over odds and ends, scraps, ribbons, whatever that you can cut up into bits and add a sprinkle when and where you need a bit of color. Kind of like make your own confetti ... Francie just keeps them in a jar for when she needs them.



Tyvek - Yup, Tyvek from mailing envelopes and housing construction projects can be used in Fiber Play to create interesting textures. It bubbles as it melts ...

There's a good Tutorial on Tyvek at Joggles if you want to learn more.


My favorite is Steam-a-Seam Lite 2 becasue it's so darn versatile, and doesn't build-up and get stiff with multiple layers.
On this sample (upper left), Angelina is trapped in netting with SAS. The color of the netting makes a huge difference in your end result.
Lower left, Fabric + SAS + snippets + netting.
Upper right : You can use crayons to transfer color to the SAS, then fuse it to fabric (SAS exposed)
Middle right : Paper can also be fused with SAS