Playing with gesso and textiles.

I have been considering trying a new technique. I saw an interesting chapter in a book: exploring creative surfaces by Lynda Monk.
My machine embroidery group at the Embroiderers Guild, Victoria, had the theme water, and I thought I would try to use a new technique, seeing it was a small piece and was just for play.

The chapter I came across was Creative Surfaces with Scrim. I love scrim!
I started with some white scrim and ironed it onto some adhesive interfacing.

Then I put Gesso over it.

Then I painted it with acrylic paints.

I didn't really have much of an image in mind, I was just playing. And I don't have a lot of acrylic paint, so just used the primary colours and blended them. (I do have black and white too, of course.)

As the textile was rather thick, I wasn't game to use my machine on it. I hand sewed a little bit to make it fit our Water theme.

This photo was taken at a different time of day and is rather murky. The actual piece does look a bit better than this!

I have some rather ancient silk dyes. I thought I might as well get them out and see what happened. It seemed to be much stronger colours, but I also seem to have smoothed the gesso out a bit more.

Then I decided to paint the interfacing (why not?) with silk dyes.
I also played with a small bit of Tyvek (I got it in a kit many years ago, I only have a small piece.)
I adhered the Tyvek to the scrim with Vliesofix .

The heated Vliesofix (I used an iron) shrank and pulled the scrim a bit more.

 I then ironed it onto the adhesive interfacing, as I had done with the other pieces.

At this stage, there was no gesso, so I smeared a small bit next to the Tyvek and it took the silk dyes a little differently.

You can see that I have painted some Tyvek too, the piece on the left. I haven't done anything with it yet.

I haven't played with it since October.  I have been tidying up - a little bit and I came across this in my visual diary and thought I might give it a go again soon.