Getting Messy In The Kitchen

Another snow day off from school, and the cardinal is telling me the bird feeder needs filling.

For the last several days, I have had a messy, space-consuming project going in the kitchen 

No, I haven't been baking a lot of bread. I have been trying out flour-paste resist as a way to add texture to cloth. This is how it happened.

I was going through a rather large stack of old Quilting Arts Magazines, before passing them on to quilt guild  friends. The words flour-paste resist kept popping out at me.  I couldn't stop thinking about it, so the next morning, I whipped up some paste, according to the recipe in one of the articles. I think it was an article by Jane Dunnewald, but since I've given the magazine away, I can't say for sure. 

The article said to make it like pancake batter, so I did, and then I poured it on my PFD fabric, and spread it around in an even layer.

The article also said that it could be drawn into with a skewer, so I added some words and shapes. My idea of pancake batter must be runnier than the author's, as the marks filled back in with the paste.

I went back in some time later, and remade the lines. In some places this caused the paste to pull away from the mark, the way pizza dough will pull away from the edge of the pan.  

It took an extra day for the piece to dry, and its amazing really, to watch it begin to curl up. Later I remembered that I was supposed to have pinned it to the "printing surface". Not really an option when the "printing surface" is your kitchen island.  

Once the piece was dry (this morning, in fact), I rolled it up from one side, and then from the other, to allow the dried paste to crack. The article actually specified covering the surface with thinned paint, not dye, so that is what I did next.  

I have to wait several days for this to dry, and for the paint to "set". This is necessary, since I can't heat set it with the flour still on. But now I'm wondering, won't the paint just glue the flour to the fabric? Hmm....Well, this should be interesting. Stay tuned. I'll let you know whether I end up with a treasure, or just a big mess.