March Tart Kit: Starch Crackle

This month will be an experiment with starch crackle. The kit contains PFD fabric, Dye-na-Flow paint, wheat flour and rice flour. The process will take several days so be prepared!

Prepare your work surface. Tape the PFD fabric down. Mix the flour according to the directions in your kit. Make sure there are no lumps. It should resemble pancake batter. Pour it along the top edge of your fabric and with the card pull the batter down the length of the fabric until there is an even layer of flour paste on the fabric. If you want to make a picture, with the craft stick, make your mark before the flour paste dries. As the paste/fabric dries, it will curl and become hard. This usually takes overnight.


When the paste has dried thoroughly, remove the tape and crinkle the fabric to create hairline cracks in the flour. The more you crinkle, the more cracks. Snap the fabric and brush off the excess flour dust.


Retape the fabric for painting. The paint you use needs to be very watered down - the consistency of milk. Dye-na-Flow is perfect. It does not need to be thinned. However, an acrylic will need to have water added to get the correct consistency. Without putting too much paint on the brush, brush paint over the surface of the flour. Be careful about oversaturating. If the back gets solid looking, you have overpainted.


This is an example of the back of a piece that has been painted.

You now must let the paint dry and cure for at least 24 hours. You will not be able to heat set the paint before it is washed so the longer you wait between painting and washing the better the color. Soak the painted fabric in water to remove the flour paste. Wash thoroughly with a little soap, rinse, and dry. Press the final piece.

Use this one of a kind fabric however you like. It can be overdyed, painted, stamped, or foiled before sewing into your art piece.

February's Tart Kit: Air Dry Clay

This month the kit includes air dry clay, a mold, and wire. You can embellish your art quilts with a face or figure from the mold, a bead or button or imprint from a molding mat all made from air dry clay. However, you do it, the result is lightweight and easy to attach. Air dry clay does not need to be baked. It will not stick to your skin or clothing and it does not crumble. You will find that it is very easy to use.

To use the mold, roll the clay into a ball the size of the impression you are going to use. Press it into the mold completely, building from the bottom out to the edges.



Place the mold with the clay in it inside a freezer for at least 90 seconds. Pop your design out of the mold by pushing gently from the back side, like you would pop out an ice cube. At this point you can add more details, or alter the molded piece. Let dry for at least a day, then it can be colored.
To use a stamp, roll out the clay to the thickness desired. If you are going to use a rubber stamp, it's a good idea to sprinkle a little cornstarch or baby powder on the stamp so it will pull away from the clay more easily. Stamp the piece of clay and remove the stamp gently. Leave the piece on a flat surface to dry overnight before coloring.


To make free form embellishments, roll clay into a ball, or sculpt into a circle, oval, spiral, or any other shape you desire. Poke holes in the clay to make beads, buttons, or charms for stitching. Let dry and color.

The drying time of the clay depends on the thickness of the piece and the humidity. Color the clay once it has dried with any type of paint. Age the clay with ink pads, shoe polish, coffee or tea. Highlight recessed areas with colored pencils or chalks. Highlight raised areas with "Rub n' Buff". Attach your embellishment with thread, yarn, beads, or even glue. You will find that it will not affect the weight of your piece.

January's Tart Kit: Fabric Textures

Sue Anne made this piece with a textured fabric as the background to the machine embroidered flowers. The folds and crinkles add a slight dimension to the surface behind the flowers.

This month the lesson covers four methods of creating texture to your fabric which will give your piece more tactile and visual appeal. The manipulated fabric can by your focal point or used for a more subtle background.

To pucker your fabric, you will layer a piece of nonshrinking fabric over the piece of diaper flannel. Stitch as desired and wash in hot water to shrink the flannel. This will cause the top fabric to pucker.

To bubble fabric: Lay a wet piece fabric like velveteen over a grid and push the fabric through the squares. You will start in the center and work out to the edges. The finished piece will be about half as large as the original fabric. While it is still wet, iron a piece of fusible interfacing to the back side and let dry. Carefully pull the finished bubbled fabric out of the grid.





Crinkling fabric: Wet a piece of fabric and squeeze out the excess moisture. Gather the fabric into folds and begin twisting until the fabric begins to curl up on itself. Keep twisting until it has become a ball. Push the fabric ball into the toe of a knee high nylon and dry thoroughly. When dry, remove the fabric and lay out. Determine the amount of crinkle you want and adhere a piece of interfacing to the back side.

Scrunching the fabric: Cut a piece of fusible interfacing and lay the fusible side up. Place a larger piece of fabric wrong side down and scrunch up the top fabric until it is roughly the same size as the interfacing. Lightly iron from the front. Turn over and finish pressing fully. Embroider with decorative threads.

December's Tart Kit: MagicStamp

This month's lesson will be using a MagicStamp and ProFab textile paint to create images on fabric. Sue imprinted keys into her MagicStamp to print the center piece of the quilt above. As you can see, this printing will make a negative image as the paint on the stamp colors the fabric around the key. There is one key shape that is actually stamped. Sue put paint directly onto the key before printing.


You will start with a "clean" piece of blue foam - the MagicStamp, a rubber stamp, and ProFab textile paint. Heat the blue foam with a heat gun for about 30 seconds, being careful to not overheat it. Once heated, press it onto the rubber stamp and hold for 20 seconds. The stamp is now imprinted into the foam.

With a foam brush, spread the textile paint onto the foam and press onto fabric. For multiple prints, it is best to print before the paint dries - wet on wet. When finished with printing, let the paint image dry completely and then set it with an iron. If the printed fabric will be washed, let it set for at least 14 days before washing. The foam cleans easily with water.

Once you are done with one imprint and the foam is clean, use the heat gun again to "erase" the image. The MagicStamp is now ready to take another imprint. As long as you do not melt the foam, it can be used over and over. Remember to use both sides!

Besides using the rubber stamp, look for interesting textures and shapes in other objects. This old rusted wire basket will be imprinted after heating the foam.

Also in the kit is a length of weatherstripping which can be cut to make your own geometric, foam stamps.

Your cloth has been painted and stamped. By making your own fabric, you will be creating your own original quilted piece.

November Tart Kit: Angelina

The kit this month gives you a chance to play with Angelina fibers and film and to use it as a design element in your next piece. The butterfly above was made by Sue using the Angelina film and Extravorganza. She sandwiched the printed butterfly between two pieces of film and pressed. She trimmed around the design just outside of the film edges which had adhered together. The sunflower was also printed on the Extravorganza and fused onto a yellow fabric, trimmed and appliqued to the background.

Angelina is wonderfully colored fibers and film that can be pressed, cut, sewn, stamped, painted, and much more. It has the ability to add sparkle and shimmer to the surface of a piece. The Angelina fibers in the kit are called hot fix and will adhere, generally, only to themselves. It is very important that you use a press cloth so that they don't stick to your iron or something that you do not want Angelina'd!

Take a small amount of fiber or a lot and arrange it on the press sheet, cover with another sheet and press for about 3 seconds on a silk setting. The more you iron, the more you change the surface of the Angelina - especially the color. Once it is pressed, it can be stitched, cut, or torn.

Angelina fibers can be mixed, or patterned.

Because Angelina sticks to itself, you can entrap yarn, fabric, or sequins between two layers, allowing the bottom and top fibers to come into contact.

By placing Angelina fibers between two pieces of water soluble stablizer, you can create a lacy effect. Wash away the stablizer and let the piece dry before you iron.

You can also press a sheet of Angelina, cut up and place with other snippets of yarns and threads between the water soluble stablizer and stitch.

The Angelina film will melt with the heat of the iron or a heat gun. Use it in strips to make beads. Or crumple it and iron it and it will look like crystals.

October Tart Kit: Pin Weaving

This month's lesson will give you the basics of weaving on a portable loom as well as instruction on doing randon fabric weaving. Hopefully, the photos will make the written instructions a little more understandable. The first photo show the pins in place along a piece of graph paper placed on top of a foamcore board and a yarn wrapped around the pins. This is called warping the loom.

The warp thread can be split with a double row of pins allowing a slit in the weaving like a buttonhole. The weft material will split around the slit or it can be woven back and forth up to the slit.

By placing the outside pins in an irregular line, your finished piece will not be straight across. You will use the outside pins to create your finished edge so it can be exactly as you want.

The next photo shows two things: you may warp the loom with different types of thread (see the heavier, darker thread and notice it is split; and the placement of the weft material in an arc. Leaving the weft material in an arc will allow it to be "beat" into place without pulling in the side warp giving a more even weaving.

When the weft material is in place, use a comb or plastic fork to "beat" it into place. You can beat it as tight or loose as preferred.

By weaving a craft stick in your weave and standing it on edge, you will create a shed or opening that allows you to move your weft material across the weaving. This will help if you have a heavy yarn or weft material that will not pull through the warp yarns easily. Otherwise you may use the weaving needle to go over and under the warp yarns.

The following photo shows a mostly finished piece. Not the slit on the right, the uneven botton edge, the curves in the weft material, the variation of the widths of the weft materials, and the changes of weft material. Experiment with laying in a heavier weft and filling around with a lighter yarn.

This next photo shows the weaving of silk ribbon in a diamond shape. By placing the pins in a specific line, you may create pretty much any shape you desire.

In this next weaving, the weft materials are left loose as fringe along the top and bottom sides. The middle section was woven with a selvedge by taking the weft back across the warp in the opposite direction without breaking the thread. The weft can meet in the interior of the weaving - either separating with a slit or by crossing and integrating with the second color.

The alternate weaving option is to use random fabric weaving. Strips of fabric are laid across a piece of fusible interfacing. By lifting every other strip and laying a strip across the warp, the fabric is interwoven. The next row will be accomplished by lifting alternating strips. Once the piece is woven, press with the iron to adhere it to the interfacing and remove the pins.

Curves may be cut and interwoven. The trick is to cut the curved strips side by side and keep them in order! You will then put them back strip by strip in the original order.

In either method, experiment with different weaves. The basic weave is over one, under one, reversing in the opposite direction. A basket weave is over two, under two, reserving in the opposite direction. Try over one, under two. Once you have finished weaving, remove the pins. Integrate the piece into a larger quilted piece or use separately. Add texture to your weaving, by incorporating beads, wood, torn strips of fabric or paper. Dare to experiment!