Felting and Fiber Studio

I met with my local surface design group yesterday and we learned the fabric paper lamination technique. We followed the directions from Paper and Metal Leaf Lamination: A Mixed Media Approach with Cloth by Claire Benn, Jane Dunnewold and Leslie Morgan. We just did the most basic technique of laminating paper to a sheer fabric. In the book, the authors use the resulting pieces of fabric and layer them together with stitch and other mixed media approaches. I thought that I might take the small samples I made and see if they would work with nuno felting since it is all done on a sheer fabric. But I haven’t tried that yet. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Louise had made some samples to show us. This photo shows two of her samples.

This is one of her samples that she then painted.

This is a “gold” leaf sample on black organza. Don’t you think this would look cool on felt? I’m not sure how well the gold leaf would hold up to wear though.

So the first step is to place a piece of paper down on your work surface. This is one of Louise’s dyed papers. You can use any thin paper that you would like, similar weight to newsprint works best.

 

Then you cover the paper with a layer of sheer fabric. This is polyester organza.

I don’t have any photos of the process, but I then covered the organza with a silk screen that I already had. You could also use a stencil instead of a silk screen. Then you squeegee gel medium through the screen or stencil. The gel medium then sticks the paper and the organza together. Let that dry completely.

Here’s Carole’s piece where she silk screened a tree on to a napkin.

This is one I did with a photo on newsprint.

Here’s one of Bunny’s with an Asian symbol screen printed on it.

You can’t hardly see the organza on this one but I did an ink blot on the newspaper.

This is a ginkgo leaf with the gold leafing.

This is another one of Bunny’s. After the gel medium has dried, you iron the piece (not the gold leaf ones) for “10 minutes”. I only ironed mine for about 1-2 minutes as I couldn’t manage a full 10 minutes of ironing. Somehow that seemed excessive 🙂

Then you soak the piece in water for 10 minutes and scrape off the paper that hasn’t adhered to the gel medium.

Here is my fossil piece. This is with the organza side up.

This is with the paper side up.

This is the ink blot and newspaper one.

And here’s the bear photo. They have already been soaked in water so they are impervious to any damage from more water. They are on organza so I can’t see why they wouldn’t nuno felt. What do you think? This could be a cool way to add photos and stencils to felt so that’s the next step, add wool and see how that works.