A New Reupholstering Project

When we moved into this house the kitchen cupboards had a dark turquoise paint on the center panels which I lived with for a couple of years but then had someone come in and paint them a neutral colour. In the living room there was also a built-in bench covered in that same coloured fabric and I have been dreaming of reupholstering it for years.

I finally went out and bought some fabric and this week I have been tackling that project. The first thing I had to figure out was how to take it apart. Having done that, I proceeded to remove all the staples that held the fabric on. Big job!

It's not exactly art, but there is some measure of skill involved in doing this type of thing.

I found that they had glued the foam to the bench back which I had to try to loosen because the fabric had been put on before the foam.

I was fortunate that I could reuse the foam since it was still in good condition. There is something very satisfying in recovering old furniture.

 Voila! New bench that fits better with my decor.

Painting and Dyeing Fabric

Another of my goals for this year was to experiment with painting and dyeing fabric. I have been doing that for the last couple of weeks. I still have lots of stuff I want to try to get the type of fabric I like to use in my art quilts but here are the results of my first experiments.

First of all I worked with an environmentally friendly paint system that leaves the fabric pliable instead of stiff as some acrylic paints will do. The system is called Colour Vie and it uses a pasty base to which I add pure pigments to get various colours. Because I am mixing up my own paint colours, I have been keeping a journal of the colour recipes and a swatch of the resulting colour in case I want to replicate that colour.

To this white yogurt consistent base I add colour pigments.

These are the bottles of pigment.

Colour swatches and recipes

The resulting colours painted on a natural muslin.

While the snow was still on the ground I wanted to try some snow dyeing which is done with powdered dye pigments. I lay my fabric on a rack in a tub, cover it with snow and sprinkle dye pigment on the snow. As the snow melts the pigment sinks into the fabric. I left it to sit overnight and then rinsed the fabric and washed it. Due to the amount of water from the snow, the colours are very pastel-looking. Some fabric I just scrunched together and others I folded and tied elastics around to see if I could get some patterning. I used this technique twice once with blue and red pigment and once with red and yellow pigment.

Snow covering the fabric in the tub.

It's important to always where a mask when mixing or sprinkling dye as it's toxic to breath in.

Snow covered with dye powder.

Fabric after the snow has melted away.

Next I mixed dye pigment with water and just squirted it over fabric that I scrunched and folded and tied elastics around. Here I used blue and yellow dye. The colour in these samples is darker and you can see the patterns left by the folding and elastics.

I will definitely use these fabrics in my art, however, the jury is still out on whether I will rely only on my own hand dyed or painted fabric for my art. I still really like commercial fabric designs and they have been working well in my art quilts.

Scrapbook Keeping Continued

As promised, below are the title pages for the last 7 years of our business scrapbook. I've been experimenting with dying and painting fabric lately so tune in next Thursday when I'll be blogging about that.

Tony

In 2014, I sketched throughout the whole season and put together a digital book.

Hibiscus

Bougainvillea

Inside the greenhouse

Wheelbarrows

Salt season

Scrapbook Keeping

Scrap booking used to be all the rage years ago and perhaps it still is but I think with the invention of the digital book, scrap booking is becoming less popular. I have made several digital books but I like the look of scrap books that have a personal flavour to them. I have made small scrap books of some of my travels and they are great to look through. Of course, I also add my own sketches to them and glue in photos, receipts, post cards, ticket stubs and the like.

I have kept scrap books of our family business since it began over 40 years ago. It is great to look back at our beginnings and see how we've evolved and grown. I've always added my own sketches to these books too and when I look back I also see how my art knowledge and skill has grown.

I thought you might like to see some of those sketches. Below, are the titles pages for each year from 2007 to 2012 since we moved our company to our present location. Next week I'll post the last 7 years.

I love sunflowers as a subject and yet I have so much trouble growing them. Too many squirrels in our neighbourhood.

Watercolour peonies, another of my favourite flowers.

This is a collage of flowers cut from magazines and one of my failed paintings ripped up.

The Boss

You'll see these iconic "domes" in many of the pages.

"Domes" seen from a different angle.