Experimenting with Gelatos® on Fabric

Recently I visited the Whangarei Quilt Exhibition and I spent a little bit of money at one of my favourite merchants, Tulis Textiles.

I bought a few Gelatos®, as I'd seen Kerry from Tulis demonstrating with them a few times now, and I thought it was time I had a play myself.

Gelatos™are a creamy, water-based paint stick.  If you've ever used Shiva sticks, they are a little like that.  Except Shiva sticks are oil-based and Gelatos® are water-based, with all the benefits that that brings - easier cleanup, less fumes, less time to dry etc.

My colour selection for experimenting was: black liquorice, black cherry, metallic blueberry, aqua dolce, pistachio, and red cherry.  Sounds delicious!  I made sure I had a dark and a light and a metallic in my selection to give me a good range to see different results.

The first thing I tried was using a stencil.  I'm actually using a reverse stencil (the positive image, rather than the negative cut-out).  It was the left-over paper backing from a fusible web shape and I was just grabbing what was lying around, but you could make stencils from freezer paper, stencil plastic or use something already cut like a paper doily.

I made a little video of how the experiment went.  Spoiler alert - it went really well!

I'm going to try another way to work with them soon, and perhaps I'll share a video of that too.

Have you ever tried Gelatos®?  What was your favourite way to use them?

Tea + Rust = Grey

I've used tannins to turn rust dyed fabric grey or black before.  But I wanted to know if I could control the effect more.  Turns out you can.

I also want to show you one way I use my own photos for quilts, even if the photos aren't perfect.

So, here's a photo of a white faced heron taking off.  Blurry and unclear.  But I can still use it.

First off I print it in greyscale in A4 size.  Then I take a thin black marker and outline the bird.  I refer to the photograph and if something isn't clear, I just fudge it.  Then I take this photo and enlarge it to the size I need.  My printer has a posterise function that automatically resizes an A4 sheet to A2, then I just tape the relevant prints together.

I use a light box (my mac screen makes a great light box!) or a window and trace this onto freezer paper.  An x-acto knife makes cutting out precise and easy.

So now you can paint, or stencil, or discharge or use this stencil however you like.

In this case, I ironed it to a previously rusted piece of fabric.  Then I applied wet tea leaves over the shape.

I didn't want the liquid from the leaves to 'wick' too far under the stencil so I wanted it to dry quickly.  To do this I placed paper towels over the top and ironed it on a hot setting.  Once it was pretty dry, I brushed off the tea leaves, peeled off the stencil and ironed it again.

I'm very pleased with the results!