Darcy Wilkinson #3 Victorian Adventure Bag

"Hello again, time to play with fabric today. After watching Leandra's videos on you tube where she paints on fabric using the Fresco paints, I just knew I wanted to try it out. Not one to do anything easy I decided to go BIG".

I popped to my local haberdashery and picked up a metre of heavy weight cotton twill fabric. I had originally gone for sheeting, as recommended by Leandra. The only sheeting available was cream, and I wanted white. The piece I bought was £6.99 for the metre, and I made 2 large projects from it.

My first job was to wash the fabric, just to remove any sizing that might be on the surface.
I then laid an old cotton bag onto the fabric as my template. I made sure to leave lots of extra fabric for mishaps,seams and any last minute straightening that I might need to do. So now I had a large rectangle of white fabric (double the intended length, as it will be folded in half and seamed up the sides at the end).

So now onto some decoration, how could I use the stamps and paints? I laid out the stamps that Leandra sent and decided to use HPXT02 as my main images. I quickly decided these would make great flowers on a hat....and the sketch grew from there.

I sketched the hat, added a face and then stamped the flowers onto spare paper and then cut them out so I could arrange them. At this point I felt it might all look a little flat, even on fabric, so I knew I would have to find a way to add dimension.

I cut out my face and hat and used them as a template to draw lightly onto the fabric. Once happy I went over my lines with a permanent pen. I used a Mitsubishi uni-ball eye pen. Once dry and heat set it is permanent,waterproof and fade proof.

Next I used one of the smaller stamps to fill in the goggle eyepiece. I used black Archival Ink.

I used the original flowers that I had cut from paper as masks, and used my stamp-a-ma jig to help placement. Masking and arranging I stamped the flowers and also 2 feathers from HP1008.

At this point I really did wonder if it would be waterproof, so I washed, dried and ironed the whole piece. As you can see none of the ink disappeared.

Now to paint. I started with the face, and used the following Fresco paints - Snowflake, Stone and Rose for the skin, adding in a little Cinnamon for the shadows. To each colour I added a little fabric medium.

I chose to have blue running through all the flowers but apart from that I had no clear colour
choices, I just went with whatever looked right for each bit. I think I used almost all my colours.

To compliment all the bright colours in the flowers I made the hat very neutral, mixing my browns, blending and layering. Once dry I dry-brushed some Stone over the hat as the highlights. Adding fabric medium to each new colour.

Next I worked on the goggles, making them a deeper brown to look like leather. I don't have a very dark brown but I found layering and mixing my browns and adding a touch of French Roast gave me the shades that I needed.

I added the lipstick using a mix of London Bus and Blood Orange and fabric medium.
I knew I wanted to stamp the hair, but painting in-between curly,spirally, squiggly lines didn't seem like a fun prospect so I painted the hair first. I used Zesty Zing first, then Pumpkin Soup, then Cinnamon, and finally stone for the highlights. I painted very loosely just using a flicking motion.

Once the hair was dry I stamped all over it with Squiggly Ink Mini 08.

Now to add the metal parts of the goggles. I wanted to use Treasure Gold, I knew it could be used on fabric but I didn't know if it would stay put after washing. I did several samples on spare fabric. I tried it on its own and mixed with fabric medium, I also tried it with a layer of fabric medium painted over it. I then washed the samples and they all washed out in varying degrees. A dull brown colour is left behind but most of the metallic shine comes off.
So what should I do, I then tried samples with metallic pens, pearl-ex powder + medium, metallic acrylic ink....all of them washed out, some more than others.

So I decided to just use the Treasure Gold, knowing that only part of it would stay put. To be honest I am not too worried, I don't see me washing the bag on a regular basis.

I used Brass and Copper, I mixed them with a little fabric medium to make them easier to paint on . Once dry I deliberately rubbed some away, to make the goggles look tarnished and worn.

Now for the background. I mixed up my paint with fabric medium and randomly filled in the whole background, blending the colours where they met.

Next I stamped all over with Mini 23, Mini 60 and a small dot stamp from HP1204

Step 3 I rolled Snowflake over the background using a brayer.

Step 4 I used a Crafters Workshop Dot stencil and added Beach Hut.

Step 5, once the Beach Hut was dry I bumped the stencil and added Snowflake.

Basically I treated the background just like a journal page. Now to add dimension. I stamped 3 of the flowers again on spare fabric, also 1 of the feathers and also Mini 48.

I painted these and ironed them to heat set them.

I then ironed some interfacing (vilene) to the back of them all. Once cut out the interfacing stops them from fraying.

I cut several large circles of sheer /organza fabric and machine stitched the cut out flowers to the sheer fabric.

I clipped into the fabric all the way around and then used my heat gun to shrink/shrivel/melt the sheer fabric. Note. Do this VERY carefully, over doing it will disintegrate the fabric and your fingers!

Now I had fluffy textured flowers. I stitched them to the bag and added a metal button to each centre. I treated the feather the same way and stitched it on between the 2 'flat' feathers.

Now for some embellishments.

I added the chain and the heart clasps to the goggles. I also added some lace to the hat.

I then stamped a face from one of the flowers onto fabric, once painted and ironed to interfacing I then glued it to black card. I used Glossy Accents to glue this piece into the blank pendent. I then filled the inside with Glossy Accents.

I straightened up the sides of my fabric then folded it in half and seamed up each side. I added the painted Mini 48 to the back of the bag, and finished it off with a red lining and some thin strappy handles.

 Here is the finished bag, all ready to go on an adventure.

Over to you....come back, don't run off screaming with terror. I don't expect you all to make bags, though it would be fabulous if you did. Just think of the PA adventures we could all go on together!

Try a little fresco painting on fabric, see what you can come up with.

Leandra Says: Very, VERY cool. The flowers look amazing with the textured layers, fantastic to shrivel that sheer fabric, in fact, if people don't have time to make a whole bag this week (snorts) then making flower brooches using this technique would be an awesome thing to have a go at! Utterly brilliant Darcy, and so fascinating to get a true insight into the process!

Gillian Says: O.M.G ... stunning stunning project Darcy. I'm literally lost for words. Love the use of the stamps with your beautifully hand drawn image, love the cool head gear.

No doubt Darcy has not only blown you away with her project today, but perhaps there are some ideas within this that you might like to try; stamping and painting fabric, frazzled flower embellishments, or if you have time, how about a stamped bag! However your muse is spurred to action, share with us all your creativity here, just link up from any web page. We'd love to see what you've been up to as a result!