 Welcome to the second part of seeing if we can incorporate some of our painting and specifically watercolor into slow stitching and by We I Me Me. So in a previous video, I'll talk about this file in a minute, which I'll link in the description below, I experimented with seeing if I could watercolor on this piece of canvas. I used a Daniel Smith product called Watercolor Ground, which is basically like a gesso for watercolor to prep the fabric and then did my painting and in the video I show you exactly what I did and how I did it. Now the watercolor ground while I'm going to assume without going and checking up on it and if I'm incorrect, I'll put some text here that the watercolor ground while maybe in some instances is intended on canvas. I'm pretty sure it's not intended to be flexible, at least not over a long period of time. So before we do anything else to prevent the painting from cracking and from fading and try to keep it as light fast as possible, we're going to do two things. So I've already sprayed it with two coats of an archival sealer, which I use for watercolor paintings specifically and I'll put the brand in the video description. And then we're going to take this little piece of chipboard, which is cut to about the same size as the painting, and I'm going to use a glue stick and we're going to just glue it to the back of the painting. I'm going to try to get it on the back anyways, hopefully I can sort of get it back there. There's a little bit of thread everywhere. I'm going to just use the glue stick to hopefully sort of, yeah, at least temporarily just so it doesn't slide around. Certainly when I'm doing slow stitching, I would pin it, but we're not going to even try to pin through chipboard. That's not going to happen. But now when I get it stitched down, there's a piece of hard chipboard back there that will prevent the fabric and the painting from flexing. So now to go with the painting, I pulled out a variety of scraps of different kinds of fabrics. I had some fabric sample from Spoonflower, which is a website that I have some of my own fabric designs on, which I will link in the description below. And you can order fabric samples from them to get an idea of the different types of fabric they have. You can get your artwork or someone else's printed on. And I have had an old, old, old fabric sample pack. Some of the fabric types they don't even have anymore. So I took it up, I found it in my desk and I took it apart. I picked out three of these I thought would go for. Some other just cotton scraps. This is a piece of silk sari ribbon as is this bigger green one and this little one. Here's some more cotton scraps, a piece of burlap. This is half of a zipper that I used the other half for, I don't know, a project somewhere. And this is going to be our base. This is a piece of felted wool. So I am going to show you a speed through of how I lay out and select the different base pieces of fabric that are going to go around our painting and how I get them pinned together. And then once I get that done, I'll be back and I'll talk you through stitching, doing the base layer of stitching everything down. All right, let's get started. I'll be right back. Get to this point and it's time to baste all of these background layers of fabrics on, which is what we're going to do. And sometimes I get to this point and I just baste them all. I do the stitches over everything at once. Sometimes I peel the different layers back and sew like the painting down and then sew this piece down and this piece down and then sew this piece down. I think this time we're going to sew the painting down and then we're going to sew everything else down as it is. I do have some size 10 crochet thread here in a needle. I'm not sure it's quite enough to go around, but I'm going to use here what's already threaded in this needle. It's kind of a thick, heavy duty thread. And I think what parts of the stitches may still show will look nice, give a nice texture to the canvas that's here. So I try to pin this in a way that I can do this to stitch it down. And I try to grab a couple of small wonder clips. These are I think by Dritz. You can find them in your Sewing Notions Department at any fabric store. I'll put a link in the description below. And when you're laying out your fabrics before we start this stitching part, I want those of you who've never done this before and never done any kind of fabric collage before, just if you've done mixed media collage and paper collage, think of it or painting. Think of it as that. So you're combining your colors and your mark making, maybe your stencils, your pens, your writing in different layers on your art journal pages, your other artwork you hang on the wall. Fabric collage is no different. So you want to combine your textures and your colors. And part of that is the stitches, part of it is the fabrics and assemble them in a way until you find something pleasing in this layer, rearrange them and pin them before you stitch anything down until you find an arrangement that you like. Then we'll start the stitching. Now don't let the stitching intimidate you either because we're just going to use a straight running stitch. Nothing complicated. So I've got a fairly long large eyed needle here with this thicker heavy duty thread on it. And I can feel where that chipboard is underneath. So I'm going to make sure I'm not trying to stitch through the chipboard, but I'm going to be kind of near it. I'm going to come up through the bottom of the back. And then I'm going to go in about a quarter of an inch, I will come back up again about a quarter of an inch away and then in, we're going to do that all the way around the little painting and then I'll be back. Different colors of thread. This is silk, vintage silk buttonhole twist. I'm not even sure they make silk buttonhole twist anymore, but any thick sewing thread will do. You don't need anything fancy. You can also use embroidery floss. I'm using what I have. I'm going to use that same needle I was using just because this is a bigger, thicker large-eyed needle. So it will handle working with the buttonhole twist, but also it can handle going through this canvas, which is kind of thick. I'm going to start with this brownish colored one. And I just use a single strand, put a knot in the end. And for this brownish one, I think I want to sew down these pieces of fabric and the plaid. So I think what I'm going to do is move some pins. So I'm going to move this pin here and this pin here. That way I can do this and stitch that down. For this, I'm going to just sew it where it is without lifting anything. And when I sew the silk down, I'll go around that. I want to get this plaid fabric stitched down with the green to be on top. You'll see what I mean in a minute. So we're going to where's our clips? So it is helpful sometimes to sort of clip like this. So things don't flop around on you when you're trying to stitch. We're still going to use running stitch, pick a direction. You could go sideways, you could go in circles. I generally like to go vertical or horizontal. I think for this, I'm going to go vertical. So I'm going to start in one corner and come up from the back. Since I'm right handed, I'm going to I'm going to do this. So then when it's flat on the table, I'm going to just poke the needle through till I can feel the table and then come up keeping my stitches again about a quarter of an inch or less as big or small as you're comfortable with. The whole idea of slow stitching is it's supposed to be a slow, hand stitched meditative process. So I usually have music on in the background and I'm just stitching and letting go of all those things that are stressing me and just stitching away. I do turn the piece a lot. I don't try to line up all of my stitches. I don't try to have them be the same length. I don't try to have my rows be even if they are they are. But I like it to look sort of primitive. Can you see that right there? So I'm going to sew the two squares down and then I'm going to sew these three pieces down, then I'm going to do the green. I'm going to speed forward through the process. You'll see what I'm doing. I'll be right back because I'm going to take the sound out. But my table is so squeaky. Or my chair. No, it's my table. Anyway, thread pieces done. And you'll notice that I'm saving these extra like long pieces of thread. I don't throw these away or dispose of them until I'm sure I'm completely done with the piece. And even then I these are decently long pieces of thread and I use them to do things like so. The words onto my positive affirmation doll or a little other small projects, maybe on another stitching project. I need just a little piece of brown or beige thread. And so I take my needle keeper. And I have a little bit of fabric thread in the back, so they just go in there. All right, so now we're going to switch to the teal-y color and we're going to stitch all these other ones down again. We are just doing a running stitch, nothing fancy. OK, so I'm going to do that. And I'll be right back. I'm going to show you what I do about all the wrinkling of the fabric. You can see it kind of there you go from the back. There's a reason that I like to I prefer to work on a felted wool background. It's easily flattened. I really am not. I do sometimes use an embroidery hoop, but more often than not, I don't. I prefer not to. And with this one with the chipboard in there, I'm not sure how you'd really fit this in a hoop anyway. And I, as you can see, like to run right to the edge. So again, not really hoop friendly. But I'm going to move you around a little bit. Here, I'm going to show you how I fix the wrinkling. I do it at all stages, beginning, middle and end and hang on one side. So I'm at my ironing board and that'll give you a clue. So generally, I don't have a painting on my work. So we're going to assume this is going to turn out all right. But I guess we'll find out in a minute. What I will tell you is because there's a painting on the front side, maybe because some of the bits or pieces that I've sewn on to the front after things have been done and completed are maybe not heat proof. I would usually work from the back. Also, though, I like to, as you can see in this piece that I did, add seed beads. So once you do that, it's hard to do what we're going to do from the front side. Plus like on this one, I have some ribbon embroidery that I didn't want to mess up. And on this one, too, there's a lot of seed beads and different kinds of things on here. So usually I do it from the back and usually I would trim this excess wool off. But I'm actually, as we're working on this, I'm thinking I might want to hang this on a piece of driftwood or something. And I might want to pocket up here. So at the moment, we're going to leave this because I don't think this part of it is complete. What we're going to do is turn it to the back side and I've got a hot steam iron. Now, on this one, mostly, we just need to do the edges because that center part is pretty flat with that piece of chipboard there. But just because it's wool, I can give it a good steam and a good iron. And look at that. It takes all the wrinkling out. It didn't hurt the painting. It didn't hurt the painting at all. And on the front side, I can carefully go, but I'm not going to touch the painting. And I can just flatten out the fabric and get all the wrinkles out from hand manipulating it. And now we are good and ready for the next step. So to answer your question, can you add a watercolor painting to your slow stitching? Yes, sir, you can. This is just one way where you're adding an actual painting. You also could if you have a piece of artwork that you've done, you could reprint it onto fabric and then use that little piece of fabric in your artwork. I have done that with some sort of doodle embellishments that I've created that I've printed on fabric. I'll include a picture here. I'll also include a picture here of this one that is created from a piece of my artwork and I have a picture of that piece of art in this side by side. So there's a lot of different ways you could do this. This is just one way. I'm having a lot of fun with this. It's not turning out how I thought, but I think it might be even better. In the next video, we will start adding embellishments to it because we're nowhere near done. I hope this doesn't whole process doesn't intimidate you. And I hope it gives you you give it a try or maybe it sparks some creative thoughts and ideas in you. For me, it's just another form of collage. And this is definitely truly mixed media because you're combining painting and stitching and we're going to be doing beadwork and embroidery. So it's very cool. That's it for today. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Check out the video description for any relevant links and resources. If I can find them, I'll link them in the video description. If you have any questions, comments or concerns or additional resources for slow stitching that you're looking for, please leave something in the comments. And I will be sure to get back to you. Did I say like, share and subscribe? I might have. Also, check out the video description for ways to support the free content here on YouTube and over in the Facebook art groups, not just on my video on all of your creative favorites videos. All of us, for the most part, have a way to support the free content, whether it's an Etsy shop or PayPal, tip jar, Amazon affiliate link, Patreon or something else. And there's even YouTube membership. So check out their video description. If you can't find a way to support the free content, ask them because maybe they just haven't advertised it. We all would definitely appreciate that. It takes a lot of time, money and effort to create the free content. And yeah, it's nice to be appreciated. Anyway, that's it for right now. Watch for the third part in this little series where we start to add the embellishments and that's it for right now. Stay safe, stay happy, stay creative. And don't forget to go out and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later. Bye, guys.