A group of internet artists from all over the place who have decided to give each other a challenge every few weeks, on a theme chosen by each in turn. We have different ideas and styles, but share a love of textiles, and want to have some fun.


Wednesday 25 April 2012

Time Waits for No Man

My piece for this month's challenge is "Time Waits for No Man".


For the background fabric I had an image of a clock-tower from Graz, Austria. The piece was an experiment on transferring a photocopy using oil paints and gum arabic which I made about 3-4 years ago, and has been left bundled up in a scrap bin every since. It just shows that you should never throw away any samples or textile experiments, they'll come in handy some day!!



I then tried to find some clock or time-related fabric in my stash. Turned out that I nothing that I could use, so instead I gathered some watches from around the house (had to take some of people's wrists) and then just copied them onto fabric.

I didnt even scan the image into the computer - just copied it straight onto the fabric and paper. As another experiment, I didn't pretreat the fabric, just sellotaped a piece of white fabric onto the copy paper and sent it through the printer. I don't think the image would stand up to washing, but it worked fairly well for this purpose.

 I then bondawebbed this piece of fabric and cut out the watches. These were then appliqued to the quilt top and edge stitched in white thread, to further outline the watch shapes.




Alphabet stamps were then used to add the letter "time" all over the quilt top. The phrase "time waits for no man" was also stamped on to the piece.

After doing this, the piece was looking a bit bare and lacking something, so I decided some painted bondaweb was needed. The bondaweb was painted with acrylic paints using colours used in the quilt top e.g. brown, blue, red etc. 


Strips of the painted bondaweb were then added to the piece.

Pocket watch printed onto Extraorganza

I also collected some images of old pocket watches off the internet and printed them onto a sheet of "Extra-organza". I bought a pack of it at Festival of Quilts a few years ago and finally got around to using it!

The piece was then machine quilted using a variegated brown thread and two fabrics were used to make the binding.







5 comments:

Julie said...

Lots of work and interesting mix of techniques in your piece Claire, it works really well.

Angela said...

I love this Claire, it's a really interesting piece and there is lots to look at! I must get some alphabet stamps - they could come in useful. I'm intrigued by your use of painted Bondaweb - how do you stop it sticking when you press your work - or don't you press it once that's been applied?

Claire said...

Hi Angela,
That's the main problem with using painted bondaweb - the glue doesn't lose it's stickiness if you iron over it later. You just have to remember to use greaseproof paper/teflon sheet whenever you work with painted bondaweb.

quilthexle said...

Looks like we had a similar idea - I love your interpretation !! and I have to try the painted bondaweb ...

Kathryn said...

Wonderful! I especially appreciated your description of the layering of effects - the end result is stunning!