The rest of the squares

There were 46 of the 10cm squares I mentioned in my Exploding Books post.  I used 26 of them in the exploding books.

There were 10 that were a similar colour scheme so I put them into a Khadi paper zigzag book.

The rest were put in my workbook but not necessarily in the right order!

I also had some 12 cm squares cut from the fabric we put a masking tape grid on.  I used some of these as the back of a zigzag book.

The front was made from strips of fabric I had made over the last few sessions including the batik ones.

I made a few other small books during the session but I'll save those for another day.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Getting stuck!

Well having finished the two exploding books, I was stuck.  I didn't know what to do next.  So I read some books on Kindle Unlimited and played Solitaire.  Not really very creative!

However in the back of mind was always 'What shall I do with this?' This being several pieces of cotton fabric that I had used breakdown printing to print on.

I put the photo on my Facebook page and asked the question there.  One of the suggestions was to cut it up and sell it.  I did so with the squarish piece bottom left.

I'm really not fond of the green and one of the other suggestions was to overdye the fabrics.  I still might try that.

The thing is - do I look at the fabric and say 'aqueducts and canals' or do I look at it and say 'Venice architecture'.

I decided I'd play with the latter idea first.  I got out my Venice colours of fabric paint.

I cut the right hand piece off the wide fabric.

I used the paint through some Thermofax screens but the paint was a bit too runny an splurged too much.

I printed onto repair tissue instead.

Then I tore pieces of the printed tissue and using gel medium, glued it to the fabric.

I certainly had more control with the repair tissue.  But the fabric is still too green for Venice.

Back to the drawing board!

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice

Exploding books

If you've been following along with my Textile Explorations posts you'll know that I have been making 10cm square samples of different techniques.  I ended up with 40+ squares.

You may have been wondering what I was going to do with them.  Or maybe you haven't but I'm going to tell you anyway.  I used 26 of them to make two exploding books!

First I cut squares of heavy duty Lutradur.  For the first book I melted the edges of the squares before painting them.  Then I folded them.

They fit together like this so that the whole thing can be closed up and explode!

I tried out the squares in different places

And finally settled on this combination

I painted the second set of lutradur squares with copper coloured acrylic paint.

As with the other set I cut 8 of the squares down to 9cm square and then cut them in half diagonally.

I assembled the whole thing with doublesided tape.

And what have I done with the remaining squares?

Well, that's for another day.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice