Painted Peltex Pod Form

Stitched painted Peltex, embossed aluminum and wool felt.

I was curious what the surface of Peltex would look like painted. This is the non fusible kind.
I painted one side green and the other side purple, orange and metallic gold with textile paints.The surface came out slightly porous looking, not smooth and flat like painting lutradur or fabric, it has an interesting texture.

I cut shapes out of the Petex for the center of the pod and stitched free motion designs into it. The stitching does not stand out too much on the textured surface.

I cut outside leaves from fabric I had painted a while ago and fused it to wool felt, quilting leaf designs and finishing the edges with a satin stitch. I cut strips of aluminum and stitched it on the leaves and embossed it with free hand drawn designs. The metal helps the leaves hold a curved shape

I stitched some furry novelty yarn to the tops edges of the peltex and then satin stitched the sides leaving the top open.

Kind of reminds me of Little Shop of Horrors in this photo.

I fused a base to the leaves and stitched the leaf edges together through the lower sides of the center pod connecting the whole thing together.

Blue Vessel

After making the first vessel I realized that I needed to change a few things in the construction process. I used a fused hinge method to put the base on this new vessel. This was the method I used making the Dream Houses. It made construction much easier with less bending of the panels when sewing the sides together.
I was anxious to try out this shape so I used simply painted fabric to see how it would go together. For the inside of the vessel I painted the fabric using a paint called Polished Pigments. I wish you could see the luminosity of it in the photo, it is bright and coppery. This is a new paint that comes as a powder that you mix with a paint medium (Simple Solutions; one bottle for fabric another for paper). It is so metallic and bright, it literally looks like car paint. I saw Bernie Berlin using these paints at the Chicago IQF show last spring. The color glows, it is beautiful, but the base has a very different consistency than other textile paints. The outside of the vessel is painted with Jaquard Lumiere's.

I like this shape. Now that I have a few more construction details worked out I want to try some more, but I am going to have to stop for a while and take care of a few other projects that deal with writing, dyeing and color.

Vessels

For sometime I have wanted to try making some vessels. I have several ideas I want to explore. Besides trying different shapes, I of course want to include metal.

I suppose it would have made sense to make one without adding metal first to try and work out the logistics of how to put one together, but I always want to do it all, so before I begin I just think it through as far as I can and deal with technical issues as they come up.
One thing I learned making this was that the copper metal is much harder to cut than the aluminum or pewter. My decorative scissors did not like cutting the edge on this. The second problem was realizing I could not stitch the seam all the way to the top with the copper stitched all the way to the edge. It is too hard to stitch through two layers with the added bulk of Peltex.
I used my mixed media painted fabric technique to make the fabric for the vessel.
I love the combination of the soft green metallic paint with the copper.