Working on Paper

Remember this piece I posted about playing with glazing techniques:

Well, this weekend I decided to do a little more experimenting (remembering that Sundays are reserved as art play days here).

I wanted to see what would happen if I tried stitching onto a painted paper board.  This is a piece of Canson, cold press, Acrylic paper 185lb.  And yes, painting on it did warp it a bit.  I’m not sure what I could have done to prevent that, and will have to think of that in the future.

But, back to the experiment.  I have a basket in the house that is filled with silk flower parts.

A treasure trove of little bits for fiber art and postcards and stuff.

So, I dumped the entire basket onto the rug and found some leaves I thought would work.  Then, taking them to the studio (yes, after I cleaned up the mess on the rug! lol), I started working.

Lesson One:  I need to find a better glue to use.  The Sobo glue was too wet.  When I put it behind the smallest leaf and started stitching, it came up through the silk, onto the presser foot and I had a mess to clean up.  The next two leaves, I decided I would put dots of Sobo onto and let it dry.  When I came back, I had glue dots showing through the silk.  So, lesson one, I need a more gel/stick type glue, rather than a liquid.
Lesson Two:  Keep your stitch length a bit longer.  The needle perforates the paper and increasing the stitch length (in my opinion) helps maintain the stability of it.

Lesson Three:  Keep in mind the throat area of your machine.  On my Bernina, I have exactly 7-1/2″ from the center needle position to the throat wall.  And paper does NOT bend like fabric does, so approximately 14″ square is the largest piece I could use this technique on.  This piece is 9×12 and at times it was a stretch to fit a line of stitching in without hitting that throat wall.

All in all, I like this piece.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it.  I’m not sure if it just needs mounted and framed, or if I want to use it as a center of a larger fiber piece.  But, I like where this experiment headed:

And I think I’ll keep my Sundays as reserved for me, play dates in the studio!