Transparency Transfer

It's that time again, our monthly gathering of Fiber Junkies where we love to play, share and drink champagne. We do our Show and Tell in the beginning, giving us a longer span of time to play with techniques. 

Kate has been trying to use up her scraps and made this very happy quilt with lots of colorful scraps.

She quilted it with her long arm using a floral pattern, adding even more charm to the piece.

Denny showed us a piece which was her last piece for her 10 year Masters Class with Hollis Chatelaine. I love this piece; it depicts the International Womens March back in January. I know Denny was a part of it and also remember it being a very rainy day which did not stop anyone from coming. It was a sea of umbrellas under which stood some incredible and determined women.

The background is interesting with silk screening used as an overlay on top of foliage type fabric. Fabric trees were also appliqued on.

If you remember my blog from retreat, Mary was working on a large quilt for her 4 year old grandson...and she finished it and brought it to share - lucky little guy!

Val brought another one of her beautiful handmade books...

The handmade paper features rusting and eco-dyeing....

each page a work of art...

Gen has been downsizing and in anticipation of that is finding creative projects that take up less space. She admits to loving collage and in particular, this book which has served as a wonderful source of exercises and inspiration.

These are some of the little pieces she has done using all kinds of techniques. What a great way to try out new things.

Onto the technique for the day - transferring with transparencies. You will need transparencies. I got these online and liked the fact that they have a paper edge at the bottom making it easy for the printer to grab and start printing. Use an inkjet printer as the inks have to be water soluble. You will also need an image to transfer. You can get the image onto your computer by scanning or from your camera. Any kind of image will work - line drawings or more solid imagery.

The other thing you'll need is an acrylic medium (I prefer matte finish) or a colorless extender. I didn't know about using an extender but Denny brought us each a container and it worked very well.

You'll also need fabric - either solid or patterned like the above. Keep in mind that the transparency allows much of the fabric to show through.

Mary wanted to transfer an image onto this rusted piece of fabric....

This image was scanned into the computer and than printed onto the transparency. I used the same settings as I would for anything I would print. Some printers have an option for transparency but most dont; use the standard - plain white paper setting and "normal" quality print. Many of the images were enhanced in a photo editing program first.

To transfer the image, coat the fabric with a thin layer of acrylic medium. Immediately place the transparency image side down and using a burnisher or the back of a spoon, rub over the entire transparency until the image is on the fabric. The "wetness" of the fabric will loosen the ink allowing it to transfer. This part may take a little "elbow grease". You can gently lift up the corner of the transparency to see how it is going.

Val wanted to use this picture of an elephant which was scanned into the computer, enhanced a bit and also enlarged. Your image will always be a mirror image of what you start with so if you're doing writing or something that you want to be in a specific direction, make sure you flip the image in photoshop first to get the mirror image before printing.

And here you can see the elephant is reversed...which was fine with Val. I do love the way the rusted fabric peeks through the elephant at different points giving it an eerie quality.

Gen had great success with pictures she found...

and transferred onto fabric.

Her daughter was playing with the negative setting on the camera to get some great looks...

which transferred very well.

Kate had a great line drawing which transferred very well.

She started with a mottled blue fabric.

Denny was doing something very unique. She found pictures of all the houses she had lived in, turned them into line drawings in a photo editing program...

and transferred them to fabric...Pretttty cooool....A great day as always.