This month, I’m involved with a collaborative art quilt swap at UK Art Swaps. There are 6 of us taking part; we have all chosen a theme; we each will end up with 12 4″x4″ squares, which we shall then stitch together and back, ready to hang. That means that we each have to make 2 4″x4″ squares for each collaborator – the themes are 2 lots of vintage, faces, owls, Nature/greens and flowers (my choice!).

Here are my first 4 squares, 2 are vintage (and fit in with Theme Thursday challenge this week) and the other 2 are Nature/greens. This is such a lovely thing to be part of and I can’t wait to complete my squares and get all mine and stitch them into a quilt of art from friends!

"delighted"

"in favour of"

flowers squared...

"sheepish"

All the images are image transfers onto duct tape (gaffer tape in the US?) and you can see the lovely linen texture come through the image. I saw a video on image transfers onto sticky canvas, and had one of those irresistible “I wonder if….” urges to try the same technique on tape.

Pros:

• It’s really easy because the tape is so sticky, burnish really well and the entire image shines through!
• Use as much water as you like, rub away the paper gently as usual and leave to dry.
• Eliminate “paper fuzzies” by brushing over a thin coat of mineral oil with a very soft brush (I used an old eyeshadow brush).

Cons:

• The tape is incredibly sticky, so any parts not covered by your image will attract hairs, fluff, fuzzies, etc.
• Magazine images work too, but if you rub too hard, the image layer will/can smudge – not great when you erase the nose off the face, like I did!
• You can’t machine-stitch these lovely transfers because the tape remains sticky… even after I sealed it with a coat of Golden’s Polymer Gloss Medium. I got round that on the mini-quilt squares by covering the images with clear plastic and stitching that to the fabric…

But what gorgeous results I achieved – I am so pleased, despite the tricky (sticky) parts!! It’s also a great way to use up smaller images or parts of magazine pics, like the background to the ” sheepish” square. That was a part of an advert in a magazine which I used because I liked the rough grass and boulders!

If you have any questions, just drop me an email: rosemary[dot]rowe[@]btinternet[dot]com.