Textile Doodles

Over at Karen Ruane's latest class, She demonstrated how to get doodles onto fabric so we can have our own designs to use in our work. It is an extremely simple method but wow, do the doors fly open.

First you doodle on paper.

I went through my latest sketch book and drew small thumbnails of images that I have used a few times. Everytime I finish a sketchbook, I go through it and find images that still interest me and either redraw them in the new sketchbook or photocopy them to paste in.

These little thumbnails go back years and years.

I chose two thumbnails to work with, the abstracted flower with hatchmarks and a simple leaf motif.

Then I sketched up a full page doodle in light pencil, erased a ton and finally drew over it in a permanent marker. I used a number 0.03 Staedleter and during the process realized I wanted a variety of line thicknesses. I retraced a few things with thicker markers. This also gave me a good image to do the next step. On the above image, I squiggled a line around the page before I began, providing a link to whatever came next.

The fabric is laid over the doodle, secured, and traced. Simple. I made a few changes on the leaf motif. I first drew the largest leaves, then smaller ones until just the tiny ones.

The last two sizes, I turned the page and fabric about 10 degrees several times and looked for blank spots. This prevented all the leaves from being oriented in the same direction.

Before I traced the abstracted flowers, I laid down the two colours using Copic Markers, then drew in the darker detail lines. I was expecting some bleeding of the colours into the fabric but didn't get it. Usually bleeding happens often. I was trying to figure out how to deal with the usual bleeding and then, luckily, didn't have to.

I have ironed the two fabrics and will use them up this summer. This is a great technique for capturing elements of the work that can be used in a different way. If you are tired of using a red thread, then the red can be used on your own textile. Of course, you can always grab a red fabric off the shelf, but if you have used the red thread in a square, you can draw a red square and use it. I think you get what I mean. Hop over the Karen's blog and scroll down a few posts to see what she has done with blue hexagons and you will see a better example.

 

I love this idea and its possibilities. Not that I don't have too much fabric already, but none of my own design. These two experiments are less than a fat quarter and I don't have to go to a company like Spoonflower to get more than I need.