First time out with the Tsukineko inks

This is a hard one for me to post, as it's all in progress - and I'm not so good at leaving my unfinished things hanging out there for all to see.

Anyhoo - I did a small tester painting with the inks tonight on muslin, just to see how it would go. It was a little trickier than I expected...my first mistake was watching the How-to video. The lady on that talked about working with the fabric wet... and what a mess. That was not the type of work that I wanted to do tonight!

As you can see in the picture at right I had some real problems with the colour bleeding out of the areas that I wanted it in. Luckily, the inks are heat set-able, so I ironed the heck out of it to dry the fabric and get things back under control. Once I started working nearly completely dry brush on dry fabric there was much more control. The whole piece is only about 6" X 12" in size, so there isn't a whole lot of room for dye traveling.

What I learned? Work as though it's a watercolour, layering up from the lightest to the darkest colour. Let the light colours travel, control the darks.

Keep an unloaded paintbrush and water on hand for blending. If the colours have not been heat set yet, you can reasonably control the travel and blend with a clean, stiff, damp brush.

The piece at left is what I have now. I worked the darks in while the fabric was so hot it was almost burning my fingers, but it gave me some really nice, crisp lines.

The next step for this piece is the stitching. I'll treat the thread much like I would a marker at this stage, and tighten up all the details now, in the quilting process. Wish me luck, I'll be holding my breath the whole time.

Just for fun, here's a picture of the schematic drawing for the cherubs.

The original print of these honeys is only 1 X 2". I've redrawn them to 12" X 24". I can't decide if this is still too small, and how I'll make it bigger if that's what has to happen. I'll sleep on it I think, make that decision in the morning. If you want to see any of tonight's pictures bigger, click on them and you should get to look at a larger version.

Oh, and I feel like I should apologize to my Mom for the snakes - SORRY MOM!



Happy stitching,

Lisa