Technique

Fabric Collage Art

Art and instructions by Joyce White Vance

One of my favorite background techniques is a rebirth of an old favorite – rubber-stamping and then embossing. I remember the first time, early on in myaddiction to interest in stamping, the nice lady in my local stamp store showed me how to emboss. I was entranced. I had never seen anything like it. That nice little basic stamped shape went to a shiny, raised image in no time at all, and I was hooked.

That was the better part of a decade ago, and somewhere along the road to developing more of an interest in collage art than making the occasional rubber-stamped greeting card, I seem to have left behind the urge to do simple embossing. But one afternoon, while working on a background for a piece, I became
tired of waiting for some dyes to dry, and, spur of the moment, randomly dumped some different
colors of embossing powder on the fabric and heated. Ooh! I thought. Why have I never done this before?

My First experiments involved big chunky stamps – the foam mounted kind that you can use for interior walls. They worked exceptionally well. I was particularly happy with how they looked, used over batiks and some of my hand-dyed fabrics. My personal favorite embossing powders are Bmuse Ultra-Fine Detail Embossing Powders. I particularly like the custom mixed colors, although I also sometimes take the different colors and mix them up myself. I was amazed by how perfectly this same idea worked on fabric. Above all, on fabric, because you are working on a woven surface instead of a flat paper surface, it is important to use something comparable to the ultra-fine detail powders Bmuse offers to get a look that isn’t mushy (I’m sorry to sound like an ad here, but I have been really happy with how this powder worked for this technique as compared to some of the others I had on hand).

The basics are simple. First, iron your fabric if you want a neat look (you won’t be able to iron it after embossing it without removing the powder). Pick out your stamps – chunky ones work best although it is possible to get a fairly fine line on a tightly woven fabric. Stamp using a very wet, pigment dye pad. If you are used to embossing with something like Versamark or Top Boss, you may be happier substituting a colored pad for this purpose, because the clear pads will leave no
visible markings at all before you dump the powder on them, which can lead to terrible problems if you’re trying to stamp words from individual letters, or use a small stamp multiple time to create an all-around background. Using a small stamp, like the gingko leaves pictures here, and stamping multiple times to create a background is a particularly effective method for using this technique.

Using a small stamp, like the gingko leaves pictures here, and stamping multiple times to create
abackground is a particularly effective method for using this technique.

I also really like the effect I get using bold alphabet stamps. If you look carefully, you can see that the background of this heavy canvas was painted with Lumiere paints and then embossed using an oversized rubber stamp with a bold font on it.

The picture at the beginning of this article is using my favorite technique. I absolutely love
Punchinella. I have even been known to stencil across important documents at my day job with it when things are particularly stressful. Tape an irregularly shaped piece of punchinella on your fabric, and carefully swipe over it with a pigment ink pad. You want to get enough ink down to emboss, but not so much that you run the ink underneath the holes and ruin the dot pattern. You get a wonderful background doing this. It also gives you the opportunity to randomly spoon different colors of embossing powder on the piece.

Embossing on fabric is a wonderful way to use rubber stamp images you might otherwise hesitate to incorporate into a fabric piece. As in all things, experimenting is the key. Different fabrics will has finer or coarser weaves, which will impact dramatically on the image you get. A tight weave, like a fine quilting cotton fabric or a Kona cotton will generally yield the best results for image definition. Be careful with silks or finer fabrics, as the heat gun may burn them (of course, you may also end up with the most fabulous, serendipitous results when something like this happens). But make sure you follow wherever you muse leads – typically, you will not expect to get a fine line result, particularly on a coarsely woven fabric, but I was able to get this wonderful image using a Fabric multi-color pad on a very coarse linen.

Experimenting with different fabrics, colors and stamps is sure to lead to wonderful results! Just remember to place your fabric on a clean, nonflameable surface when you are ready to heat it and fire away!