Our fiber art group met last week and we were working on paper fabric lamination. I forgot to take any photos while the group was there but can show you my samples. I have been making bark samples for my Level 3 Art and Design class so I decided I would try using paper fabric lamination for a different type of bark sample.

This one is made with 5 mm silk that was dyed with natural dyes and then laminated to a photo of bark. I decided not to do the usual process of removing a portion of the paper but just left it after the first step.

On this sample, I used the same silk and a different bark photo. Once that was laminated by screening with a bark silk screen, I completed the paper fabric lamination by removing the paper that was not adhered to the silk. Then I decided I wanted to see what would happen if I used matte medium to glue the paper fabric lamination to a background piece of paper. I chose a painted black piece because it gave the most contrast. I like the texture and look of this. Do you think it resembles bark?

The next paper fabric lamination sample I decided to use in a nuno felted piece. I placed the silk (with laminated paper) on to a piece of commercial prefelt and added bits of prefelt on top in “bark” shapes. I also added other bark shapes from a felt scrap underneath the silk. You can see one of those shapes on the left side of the photo.

Or you can peak underneath to see one under the silk.

I then wet it down and felted it. I don’t do any rolling, just mainly rubbing to felt.

Here it is after getting it nearly felted. I didn’t full it much as it doesn’t need to be hard and I didn’t want a lot of shrinkage.

Here it is after it was dry. I’m not sure if you can tell but it does have layers and texture like bark would.

The next step is to add hand stitching. I left the prefelt white because I am going to add acrylic paint over the surface of this piece after I have stitched it. I want to experiment and see what the acrylic paint and mediums look like over felt. I hope that the stitching will give the painted surface more interesting texture. Hopefully, I will have the results ready for my next post.

If you’re interested in learning about nuno felting with paper fabric lamination, I will be teaching this course again in early 2018. If you’d like to take the class, just send me a note with the class name on our contact us page and I will add you to the email notification list for the upcoming class.