Not quite a tutorial

just showing one of my former student ( Claudia)  a way she can finish her painted quilts since she hates doing facings and sleeves as much as I do.  Of course for this to work, you have to begin the piece knowing what size stretched canvas is  available. 
So I started this piece knowing I had a 11 x 14 inch stretched canvas in the house.  I also had several larger ones but opted for the 11 x 14

 


 

Using my favorite no thinking flower which is more like a doodle to me I painted this quickly to test my approach to finishing a small fiber art piece.

 I started with a piece of silk that was 15 x 19.  I layered it with a piece of 35% wool x 65% wool, leaving out the first layer of Warm and Natural that I normally use with the felt layer and backing fabric. The felt layer was cut about 11-1/2" x 14-1/2".  I also used a piece of heavy weight Pellon (R)leave in interfacing as the backing.  That was cut to the exact size of the canvas  11x 14.
I quilted the piece and was surprised that the shrinkage from quilting was negligible.   I guess due to the interfacing.  The piece was pretty flat,  no blocking was needed so I just dry pressed it to remove the Pilot   Frixion pen marks  I use this pen to draw on the silk with.  .
I trimmed the piece down to measure 1-1/2 inches larger than the 11 x 14 piece of interfacing all around

I used a generous application of Aleen's Fabric Fusion  clear glue and pinned the silk in place until it dried with  t-pins, ball head pins and  mostly tacks.   The variety was because I didn't have enough tacks and only a few t-pins, but the wood is soft enough that they all worked well.  I let it dry over night

This what the 11 x 14 stretched canvas looked like and below what the other one looks like on the back side

When the glued down in place silk edges were dry I cut a piece of interfacing 1/2 inch shorter length and width and used the same glue and glued it in place to cover the opened back a metal hanger can be added

I put a heavy book on the back to weight it down until the felt dusk cover dried

 

 

 

Time wise it was longer due to the glue I used needing to dry so maybe another kind of glue would speed it up some.  Or a stable gun if you had another pair of hands to help would be faster.

At least there was no needle, thread or sewing involved in finishing the edge of a piece and you are only limited by the size of the stretched canvas you want to buy.  I think to if I did a large piece, I would apply some archival glue to the front of  canvas that would secure the back of the quilt to it before pulling the excess to the back to prevent sagging. I hope that made sense.

 

Laura, I was quilting that piece without a backing testing out a way to finish a quilt without a facing and for a way to add a sleeve without having to do any hand work.  I worked it out, but did not like the way the edges looked.  That's why I tried one more approach, todays blog post,

Normally my quilts have four layers,

the top

the batting (warm and natural)

the felt 35% wool/65%rayon

and backing fabric (usually something cheerful and totally unrelated to the front.