Lutradur – Felting and Fiber Studio

A Card for Caterina

December 29, 2023 Karen Lane Comments 27 comments

When Ann first invited us all to take part in a holiday card swap it was mentioned that our theme could be anything, it didn’t have to be particularly Christmassy…..and so mine wasn’t. I have to say that as more and more of the cards are now being shown, a part of me wishes I had gone with a Christmas theme, but it’s only a small part! My partner in the swap, Caterina, got in first with her card to me which I love and I felt that gave me permission to do what I really fancied doing! I won’t show Caterina’s card in case she’s going to do a post about it but let’s just say we were thinking along very similar lines.

I decided to make a mini Autumn/Winter forest floor mounted on to a 5” x 7” card. Starting with an off cut of Lutrador I used acrylics and Inktense to paint it grey with hints of green, or so I thought! Once I started to distress the Lutradur with the heat gun, what had looked very grey suddenly became very green as the green Inktense intensified. Rather than start again I decided to go with the flow and add more grey where needed later.

Next I got out my box of Tyvek and Lutradur samples to see if there were any pieces of bark or leaves already made which I could use for this project.

The leaves were all too large apart from the one on the luggage label

All of the leaves turned out to be too large for the scale of the card apart from a small one attached to the luggage label on one of my workshop samples. This was the ideal shape and size so I used it as my template for the leaf to go on the card.

I had more luck with the tree bark as I found a few workshop samples, one of which hadn’t been painted and was the perfect size.

The barks been painted and I’m starting to audition pieces for the card

I can spend ages arranging and rearranging the parts, distressing the smallest pieces of Lutradur to get pleasing shapes and checking I’ve made enough to cover the background. Once I was happy with the amount of pieces I had the bark was embroidered and everything stitched down to a piece of brown cotton fabric.
And this is the finished card complete with Colonial Knots, felt pebbles and the little leaf. OK, it doesn’t scream “Christmas” but, as a keepsake, I hope it will remind Caterina of the friendships she’s formed with the F&F group and of happy Christmas 2023 memories.

Once I’d got Caterina’s card in the post I caved in and made a reindeer themed “Christmassy” card for my local textile group swap. After trying, and failing miserably, to draw a simple reindeer I turned to clip art and found this cute reindeer pose.

I’d recently seen images of beautiful little birds online that had been made from scrap fabrics and free motion stitch and these inspired me to do something similar with the reindeer.

I had so much fun making this one that I tried another pose, got carried away and went in to production!

These have been cut from fabric scraps and free motion stitched on to patterned card (which makes a great stabiliser!) I figured the antlers and legs would be a bit fiddly in fabric so I simply used a marker pen for those.

Cards have never really interested me in the past but these were such fun to make, I can see myself creating more to put aside for next year!

I hope all our readers have had a peaceful Christmas and here’s to a healthy, happy and creative 2024 for all of us!

Pink and grey synthetic fabrics, layered free motion stitched and heat distressed.

Melting & Felting

September 24, 2023 Karen Lane Comments 17 comments

As much as I enjoy felting and working with natural fibres I also love mixed media work and getting creative with heat manipulative, man made fabrics. It’s all the more enjoyable when you ask at the start of a class if anyone hasn’t worked with a heat tool or a soldering iron and you see the hands go up. You just know there are going to be some “ooohs and ahhhs” and huge smiles coming from excited students once they get melting their fabrics!
Last week I was invited to teach a group at Stainfield Village Hall, just a half hour from home. The groups organiser, Clare, had attended my Layer, Stitch & Burn workshop a few months previous in Sleaford and had so much fun creating this sea shell inspired piece she asked me to repeat the class with her group.

This technique was developed by the Canadian mixed media textile artist Susan Lenz. It involves layering synthetic fabrics on a background of acrylic felt before adding free motion stitch using cotton, viscose or rayon threads. The last stage involves “melting” the background fabric with a heat gun to create a lace like effect as seen in Susan’s In Box and Stained Glass Series

Susan Lenz creates colourful mixed media textile art using heat manipulative fabric.

You would imagine all acrylic felt would melt and therefore be suitable for this process but I’ve discovered the hard way that’s not the case! If you’re going to try this technique I would suggest testing your background felt before stitching as some simply discolours and singes rather than melting! Having been caught out once I now order a sample before purchasing by the metre. My latest supply came from Empress Mills and melts a treat!
In the workshop, although everyone is given the option of working with simple geometric shapes, I like to encourage students to think outside the box (pun intended!) and create a piece that’s unique to them. In the past I’ve had ladies using fossils, gum nuts leaves and all sorts of other motifs as their starting point for a design as you can see from these three examples…..

Working with a more organic design is also great for those who haven’t done free motion before, or maybe are not as confident with it, as your stitching doesn’t have to be precise. In fact a “sketchy” approach, similar to the leaf design, looks great!

At Stainfield not everyone got finished on the day but I’ve been told that, at the groups meeting this week, not only did they finish off what they had started with me but most of the ladies also began working on a second piece! The size we worked to was approximately 23cm square so it fits the square IKEA box frame.

Another heat manipulative workshop I teach is the Lutradur Leaves. This Wednesday evening I loaded the car and drove up to East Ayton near Scarborough, a really beautiful part of the country, ahead of Wednesdays class for Anita Cassidy and the Textile Experimental Group. I knew we were going to get on like a house on fire when I heard the name of the group!
The village hall was very light, airy and spacious, perfect for this type of class.
The group were encouraged to bring some leaves to use as inspiration and I supplied sketches for those that wanted them. Everyone worked with a medium weight 70gsm Lutradur and once again the ladies produced some fabulous work which sits nicely with their current theme of “decay”.

Between my last post and classes starting up again after the Summer I’ve done a bit of dressmaking, or “top” making to be precise. I’ve got a very simple linen, sleeveless, dart-less, top that I really like and I decided to clone it, adding darts to make it more fitted. Not having made anything with darts before I figured YouTube would be a good move….and it was!

I tried the pattern out with a very cheap floral fabric from Boyes. I think it’s viscose, it’s not silky but it shifted constantly while I was working with it so I’m amazed it turned out wearable!
The “palm tree” fabric is 100% cotton and was so easy to use, it’s definitely the better of the two.

The following week I had to create a wet felted shoulder bag to promote a forthcoming workshop. In the past I’ve sometimes deliberately used colours that I’m not that keen on to ensure I keep a piece as a sample and not be tempted to use the item myself! This time I did the opposite and carded Dream and Granite Corriedale slivers from World of Wool’s Hefty Hues range to make a bag that won’t be living in a box until the workshop in the new year!

Pale grey, square shaped wet felted shoulder bag with cut out surface decoration revealing dark blue fibres beneath.

Mixed media Pink Punk fish. Wet felted Merino fibres with studs, chain and wire spectacles.

Autumn Necklace

July 26, 2018 Karen Lane Comments 23 comments

Although we’ve got baking temperatures and scorched grass outside, indoors I’m amassing quite a collection of Autumn leaves made from Lutradur! I’ve decided its time to start thinking about what I’m going to do with these leaves and incorporating some of them into new pieces of work.

This particular leaf has been painted with Dylan bronze fabric paint to give it a metallic look.

I decided to incorporate it in a very simple choker type necklace. The leaf is quite intricate so anything fussy would distract from the detail.

I began by cutting out a 4cm wide crescent shape from a piece of white superfine Merino prefelt 20cm x 29cm.

This was overlaid with Oyster Merino on the left and Antique on the right.

I made the felt quite thick and really worked it hard to shrink it and firm it up which resulted in a very textural effect and a subtle change from one colour to the other. The leaf was sewn in place using a bronze coloured linen thread. There is a chain fastener across the back but for now you will have to take my word for that…….I didn’t think to photograph it and I’m writing this post sitting in my B&B in Scotland while the Necklace is back home! I will take a picture and add the image when I get back.

Lutradur Leaves

June 16, 2018 Karen Lane Comments 33 comments

In my last post I showed some of the brooches I’ve been making out of Tyvek. This month I thought I would continue with the “man made” fabric theme and show you how I make my Lutradur leaves.

Lutradur is another exciting non woven product which was originally designed for industrial applications including construction substrates, landscaping materials, residential and commercial wallpaper, carpet backings, automotive floor mats and carpeting, and specialized filtration devices. It is an incredibly versatile material which is available in various weights including 25gsm, 30gsm, 70gsm, 100gsm and 130gsm. It does not fray, some weights are translucent, it can be painted with any paint medium, dyed, distressed with a soldering iron or heat gun, glued, stitched, layered and embroidered. In fact, think of an application and you can probably use it!

Lutradur is available in packs of A4 size sheets or by the metre from various suppliers including Spunart in the UK.

My first attempt at using Lutradur was a couple of years ago when I made this leaf using 100gsm…..

I drew the shape directly onto the fabric, free motion stitched over the lines and then painted it with Inktense before cutting out the shape.

You can see how the colour altered once the Lutradur had been zapped with the heat tool. I was pleased with the result but there was something not quite right which I couldn’t put my finger on…..until recently.

Its staring me in the face looking back at these photos, I shouldn’t have sewn around the edge of the leaf! This is that same leaf after a little pruning of those edges and another blast of heat to curl the tips, it looks so much more realistic…..

These are some of my more recent Lutradur leaf creations made from 100gsm…..

Lutradur provides a very stable surface for stitching into.

Each one is drawn first using a Frixion pen. Next I use a heat resistant thread i.e. Rayon, Viscose or 100% cotton to add free motion stitching along the veins.

The fallen leaf which inspired the design.

Once the stitching has been done the leaf is cut out using a fine tip soldering iron. I wanted to retain most of the fabric on these particular leaves so I also used the soldering iron, rather than the heat tool, to target specific areas to cut holes.

The finished leaves painted with Inktense.

I wanted a more lacey look for this next leaf so after stitching and cutting out with the soldering iron this one was distressed using the heat gun. I left it unpainted to suggest a frosty leaf in winter…..