Couching

I blogged about this piece a little while ago. It is threads couched by machine onto calico, painted with emulsion, covered in writing ink, then rubbed over with Treasure Gold. I had couched the threads on without putting the fabric in a frame first so the surface isn’t raised as much as I would have liked. So I decided to try some other ways of couching.

This first one is threads couched by hand onto calico held in a frame. The surface turned out to be raised far more than I wanted for the piece I had in mind

I painted over the top with white Liquitex Super Heavy Body acrylic paint.

Then covered with Ziller Wild Viola Violet ink with sea salt crystals sprinkled on top. But nothing very interesting happened here.

So I overpainted with more acrylics in (showing off here!) Deep Violet, Diarylide Yellow, Anthraquinone Blue and Fine Interference Gold....

.....then rubbed over with Treasure Gold.

This next piece is Sari Silk yarn, couched onto calico held in a frame, with zig zag machine stitching. It was painted over with white household emulsion paint then black Higgins Calligraphy ink (I run out of writing ink!!) A spot of bleach was dabbed on here and there but it didn’t seem to have too much effect.

A Markal Paintstik in Leaf Green was rubbed over the top of the raised surface.

Then the whole piece was covered heavily in Copper Treasure Gold.

Although it is very difficult to see properly from the photograph, this piece has a real old metallic look about it.

In this last piece the threads have been couched on using freehand zig zag machine embroidery stitch to two layers of calico covered by a layer of muslin. I used various thicknesses of silk, cotton and acrylic novelty knitting yarns. Xpandaprint was then added. I used a heat gun to expand the paste which also melted some of the acrylic yarns. The whole piece was then covered with Higgins Calligraphy ink. There was no need to use bleach on this piece as for some reason the ink diluted in places of its own accord. The close up shows the effect of the Xpandaprint.


The whole piece was then rubbed over with Pewter Treasure Gold.

In my next blog I will show how I have used these samples.