This past weekend, I experimented with fabric-paper heat fusion following DJ Pettit's article in a past issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors. I decided to work on a stretched canvass. Everything went smoothly until I had to apply the heat. Because of the stretcher, I could not apply enough pressure to bond the paper and the fabric, even though I placed books under the canvass to support it. In fact, I destroyed the book cover which happened to be plastic. The parchment paper stuck to the collage and I peeled it off. Then, I tried wax paper. The wax melted and mixed with the collage. The paper still stuck. It was ugly. I peeled off the was paper and scraped the collage, then I applied a layer of gesso. Bits of the collage still show, creating some texture in the background. DJ applies molding paste and gesso as the first layer. Not sure if I should wait for it to dry before applying the first layer of collage papers. I found that the background was not adhesive enough when gluing the papers on wet molding paste and an excessive amount of air bubbles got trapped under the paper. When I tried applying the papers directly on fabric, there were no bubbles. Gesso could be brushed over the papers to push the layers in the background.
I will be doing this again - the right way.
