Hand Embroidery: Watercolor on Fabric

1. Intro: Hi, and welcome to my online class for Watercolor on Fabric. I'm a Dutch embroidery artist. I started with embroidery in 2016. My online name is fullmetalneedle. I came up with that name in 2016 and I stuck with it. After doing a lot of embroidery, I did a lot of pet portraits and fur, embroidering animals. I really wanted to experiment more with a different kind of material. At one point I thought to myself, "I really love those round sea paintings," and I felt, why not try to do watercolor on fabric? It took me so long. I went through so much fabric to see if it would work, but a lot of tries it worked. I was very lucky because I put it on Reddit and it got viral. Can I say that? It got trending on the top page and my real piece was that and a lot of people were asking me, "How can I do that? How do you do that? How do you use the watercolor with it?" I would love to share with you all how I do it and how you can do it. I hope you enjoy this. 2. Putting the fabric in the hoop: Hi and welcome to this lesson about how to paint fabric with watercolor. It's really fun and easy to do. It's very different than painting on paper. I must say it's all about trying to manipulate the fabric into how the paint will flow. I started painting fabric, I think like half a year ago. Maybe people will recognize this design from me, maybe not. This went viral on Reddit and it got me on lot of blogs. When it got on Reddit and it was on the trending page, a lot of comments were like, oh, how do you do this, how do you get to paint on it, and can you show us how? I thought it would be fun to show people how I do it because it's actually really easy, so why not? In this course we're going to look at what materials to use, how to get to paint on it, of course, and maybe also what projects you can do after it. It's more like a mix media thing so you can use embroidery on it or different things, you can also let it dry and maybe use other paints on it. I also did this with oil paints and acrylic, which is all really fun. But I think my watercolor pieces got the most attention, so I felt that would be fun to begin with, to show you guys. First segment of this course is going to be the products I use to hoops, the fabric and all that. Let's get started. Here you see two hoops. One is the normal wooden hoop used for embroidery. But I prefer always the wooden hoops because I think it looks nicer. That's just my own opinion. I think they look nicer, with fabric in it. The other one is called a Flexi hoop, is from DMC, the one with the plastic ring outside. They're nicer for painting. I don't like them to display fabric in or like to hang stuff upward because they're not my choice. But for painting are really nice because you can wash them later and it's better to use them for, and you don't have to pull the fabric all the time to make them tight. This is what I use to paint them. We're going to use the Flex hoop. Now I'm going to show you the fabric, that we're using, this is from not sponsored seriously. I mean, from Trish Embroidery. She has such nice muslin. You can look at her website Trish Embroidery. She has so many nice embroidery stuff to use and I love it. All the things she sells are really nice. But this is like her muslin, it's really heavy cotton and the thread count is really high, so it's really good to use and it's really soft and it's overall really nice. I use this one for painting because the fiber is going to [inaudible] and it's just overall a really good fabric to use. We're just going to lay down, just get a piece of it. For the video, I'm going to use a bigger piece, but overall don't use too much because it bleeds side and it's just a waste of your fabric. The camera is now slightly over to me so you can see how it looks. To flex your [inaudible] like plop it out, they're really easy to use, you lay flat on the surface and you just plop it right in. Make sure that it looks straight, and you just put it over it. Make sure that it's really nice and tight, and we're good to go. Now in our next video, we're going to start with the painting. 3. Painting and blending: Now we're going to look at the color. You're going to pick a color and dab it on a piece of paper towel. I have this one color that I really love. It's always everywhere in this color. Just take a bit, put it on a paper towel, just see how the color looks. Not too dark, not too light. Well, you can never go too light, it's more too dark. Then you start, wet only the bottom. Yeah, that will dry up. Only to bottom a little bit. You're going to wet that part. You wet it a little bit more. But it's going to bleed a lot up, so don't go too far so that you have a nice like half-moon shape. The brushes, yeah, doesn't really matter. I'm so sorry for this autofocus. Now you're going to take your paint and slowly crease it in one nice move. That was difficult because see you're going to try to blend it and your initial thing is what you want to do is you want to blend it a lot with your brush, but it's going to blend itself. Look, just see what it does. I'm sorry, I hope you're not getting sick from this autofocus. What happens is that it bleeds up and now with a little bit of paint that was left, so you're going to dab it into water and you make a nice straight line. It has a little bit of paint, and you're going to put a little paint on that and make a nice straight line. I'm also going to show you a little bit what I've done wrong in this one because now I'm going to make that line. What I should've had done, what I didn't do is straight up make the top where that line is wetted so that you get a nice horizon because now it's going to bleed up. This is enough with the paint. Now you get a nice effect. Now you're going to see what happens. We'll just add a little bit more. It's nice because now you're going to get that effect like it's a horizon. See now the bleeding also goes down. I think where you see the embroidery you think she made a line there. Well, I did make a line there, but it's also the bleeding that goes in. I love watching how it dries up, I don't know why. Now, you're going to see how it dries up and then you see that's why I made two videos because this is not exactly how I wanted this one to go. But I thought it was also good to show you how I did it a bit wrong and how I fix it. I'm going to cut it till it dries up. Yes, you see that it is dried up. See it's all bleeding because I made the wet part too late. I'm not going to fix the in front of you, but you're just going to go over it with water and now you can and just blend it roughly. It's not a delicate process we're doing here people. That's why you shouldn't buy fancy paints because this is what you're doing. You're just going to blend it in. But it also has a nice effect. In the end, it's nice. But see how the colors are really nice. When I posted on Reddit, a lot of people linking to me like I also did it or on Instagram like I was inspired by you. You know they're gorgeous. Well, also what I see Is that you use so much watercolor that you don't really see that it's watercolor anymore because it's too much. Now, we're going to go on to Video 2, where I see how I did it the right way in a different technique. 4. Second painting : Hello, and now we're going to do the second try. We're just going to do the same principle, but it's going to be a little bit different. We're going to use the same paint, but instead of using only water, we're going to dab it a little bit in the paint, put it in the water, and we're going to apply it to the fabric. After that you're just going to repeat it with water but your water will be a little bit tainted from the watercolors. You're just going to use that. in the end it's going to be a nice piece, it's going to be higher up, I mean for me, it doesn't happen the first try. Also for me, it takes sometimes like four tries before I really get how I really want it. If you're just starting out, if you're just trying this then don't worry. Just use a lot. We're going to use now a little bit of water and paint. You're going to dab it in again with the water that already has a little bit of color and see how fast that dries. It dries so fast. We're just going to blend it with water and go we up and up. The water will have a little bit of color because you dabbed it in there. Sorry, that's the water bottle of my guinea pig. A little bit of dark and just let that bleed throughout. Now you can really see the color, how it's working. I'm going to zoom a little bit more in so you can see it. Now we're going to use a little bit of color just a dab, not much, and we're going to go over the top line. Now we're going to use a bit of color and make a line. Now we're going to get some more after here. Now we're going to get more dark color and we're going to go over the top, very careful. Now that's what I didn't do at the other one, what was not so smart. A little bit of purple, well it's going to fade away. With the other one is that I forgot to, after I done the line to wet the upper part. I'm going to try to get the purple out. It's on the hoop, there's purple on the hoop. But see how nice it is? It looks like a lake, doesn't it? I'm just going to show you guys the whole process of the blending and how it's now going to dry. Because we want to have a bit more of the dark in the bottom. We're going to take dark again and put it a line in the bottom, a streak, and just let it, Oh God, great filming here. Sorry about that. See how that really is nice today? Now I feel a little bit like it's too streaky so I'm going to blend it with the brush the bottom. You just use a little bit of water and blend it, not too much. Just blend it where you think it needs blending. Also a good one, you see on the sides that it gets a little bit darker, because I used the wooden hoop after, you can use hoops that are a teeny-tiny smaller. Here because I didn't do that with the other one, I just let it dry. But here just keep a track on the process and just blend it. See because now you get a second layer on top.