Bye-Bye Bondaweb

Today I have been playing with various materials to try and attach my paper Gelli® prints to fabric and sew through them. I could of course print directly to the fabric but I like the more crisp and vibrant prints you get on paper.

I tried Bondaweb and fusible interfacing. The prints attached OK but Bondaweb is pretty expensive! I remembered this post by Gelli Arts® artist Catherine Tonning-Popowich where she fused prints using matt medium and an iron. I decide to paint the back of my prints with the matt medium and iron them directly onto fabric. I also ironed down an acrylic skin print. It worked!

I then free motion stitched over the top.

The back is interesting too, it reminds me of Aboriginal art here in Australia.

I wanted to see if the prints could stand up to getting wet in case I wanted to use some water soluble interfacing with them in another project. I took the piece to the sink and soaked it under running water and scrubbed it well. It seemed none the worse for wear so after it was dry I gave it a border to make a mini quilt.

I then went around the room ironing just about anything with acrylic medium on it down onto fabric to see what happened. I took my previous experiment with pouring medium and free machine and ironed that to a fabric background. I'll probably work into it more later.

As well as being a cheap and easy way to fuse prints together with fabric, the matt medium makes the paper strong enough to sew through and you can wash the stabiliser away without it tearing. No more crumbling paper like the experiment below which is held together with sticky tape.

This trial piece I made today (which has matt medium on the back) was soaked and scrubbed and and did not fall apart. I then quickly and cheaply fused it onto some fabric.

Of course you could just stick the pieces direct to the fabric with matt medium but as it it liquid it sometimes makes a nasty watermark stain. The advantage of this method is also that you can easily audition pieces before you stick them down. Now I've done these experiments I'll be using matt medium fusing on some of my landscape prints.