As many of you may know, I do a lot of mixed media on felt. I especially enjoy trying out ideas that are not usually considered appropriate for felt. Some work, some don’t, but I do like to see what happens. The mad scientist in me, I guess. My latest explorations are in paint pouring. You can find tons of YouTube videos about how to do this so I’m not going to go into the details here. Paint pouring is usually done on canvas or hard surfaces. But I wanted to see what would happen when I poured on felt or on cotton fabric. Would it work? Would I be able to machine stitch through the fabric or felt after the paint was dry? What else could I do with a piece of fabric or felt that had paint poured on it?

Our group got together last Friday to do a session of paint pouring. Everyone else was pouring on canvas, board, ceramic tile or some other flat surface. I had prepared a couple of canvas ahead of time by covering with felt or cotton fabric and stapling the backside while stretching the fabric tight.

Here’s the backs of the canvas and then the front sides. The dark purple one is the felt.

Normally you follow a procedure as above that Sally poured on a black ceramic tile. It’s really a lot of fun doing this because the results are pretty random with this type of pour and it is exciting to watch and see the changes that occur in the paint.

Here’s the tile after it’s completely covered. It wasn’t dry yet so it probably still changed from this photo but you get the idea.

I started with the cotton fabric covered canvas. I poured some white paint on the corners to cover completely. Corners are the last to get covered usually and I didn’t want any issues because the paint didn’t travel as well as on canvas.

Then I did a “dirty pour” as seen in Sally’s tile photos above. And it worked! I haven’t seen the dried piece yet as it is still at Paula’s house. These take a while to dry.

Next up felt! I should have done the same type of pour that I did on the cotton but I decided to try pouring the different colors separately which you can see on the left. The minute the paint hit the felt, it barely spread at all. Very little mixing of paint. So I decide to try adding more black and white paint at the edges and spreading them lightly over the surface. That is the photo on the right. Ugh. Pretty ugly and disappointing. Again, I haven’t seen it dried yet and we’ll see if it can be salvaged in some way. The next step is to take it off the canvas once it’s dry and see if it can be stitched. Hopefully, I won’t kill my sewing machine.

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Here are some other people’s results on various substrates. We had a great time and I will carry on with my experiment once it is dry. I’ll show you the results even if they are the ugliest thing ever!