Newest work – mounted and ready

Good afternoon,
It’s been smoky in Calgary these past few days due to the forest fires in Washington State, so we’ve been looking at the city through a haze. From my office, I can’t see the mountains, or COP in the distance. It’s not too bad today, but yesterday we could barely see the buildings a few blocks away. Despite all that, the sun was a bright pink ball in the sky this morning while I was driving to work.
I thought I’d share a photo of the newest piece of work that is now mounted and ready to go into the Exhibit this Sunday. The piece is 36″ x 36″ and it’s mounted on a birch board.

It took me a while to decide how to mount it: permanent or not? In the end, I decided to try using a technique that Nan had read about which she shared with us. You can find it here: http://heatherdubreuil.blogspot.ca/2014/01/mounting-art-quilt-onto-stretched-canvas.html?m=1
It is quite interesting, involving attaching a piece of black felt to the back of the work, and hand-sewing through the felt to the back of the piece – without the stitches showing from the front.

I bought a piece of inexpensive black acrylic felt, cut it to size (about 1/4″ smaller approximately than the 35 7/8″ size of the board) and, because the piece is quite large, used 505 temporary spray adhesive to attach the felt to the back of the work (I sprayed the felt and not the quilt).

Then came the hand-stitching part … not too successful in my case as the quilting is so tight, I found it difficult to sew through the piece without the stitches showing on the front. So … I resorted to stitching it by machine (which somewhat defeats Heather’s purpose of being able to remove the quilt from the frame easily). I don’t think my piece is going anywhere for a long time! But it went faster as it needed to be attached not just around the edges, but through the center vertically and horizontally a few times to prevent the piece from ballooning once it hangs for a while.

You can see the stitching along the binding edge:

Here’s what the piece looks like once it was attached to the board.  I used Liquitex Matte Gel Medium, applied with a 2″ bristle brush (a few dollars at the Home Depot).  I did one-half of the board first, made sure it was lined properly, and then did the opposite remaining one-half.  I had to unglue one edge to shift it – I have to say it dried quite fast.  I put it face down on a large table – on a clean sheet – and placed some books on it to keep even pressure.

And a detail.

The piece will be in the Exhibit at the Fish Creek Library in Calgary starting on Monday August 31st, until September 12th. I hope to see you there.

Let me know if you try the technique.  Did it work for you?

Ana