Last weekend, I saw an IG reel about the art form of Kinusaiga, or, painting with fabric. I liked the quilted look with no sewing, so I thought I’d give it a try.
I shelled out about $10 for the foam at Home Depot, and $20 for 5 sheets of sticky adhesive transfer tape on Amazon, and even though I’d never done this craft before, armed with half the confidence of a mediocre white man, I jumped in.
I started by cutting the foam and sticky tape to size, and sticking them together. Then I used my iPad as a light table and traced an image of Lala’s face onto tracing paper. I taped that tracing paper to the back of the foam, and used a scalpel to cut out the stencil.
Then I peeled the backing off and used that cutout as a guide to how much fabric I needed to cut for the piece. I trimmed it to size, and peeled off the backing and stuck it to the sticky tape. Then I went along the lines with a stitch ripper and tucked the ends in as I went along.
For never having done this before, boy did I learn things! You can see here that I had done her eyebrows first, and I was really happy with the fact that I used the silver cherry blossoms to mimic highlights in her fur. But when it came time to put the pieces down for the rest of her face, I had to guess at where the eyes were and it was much harder than I would have liked.
Also, pretty much as soon as I finished, the OP made a post about how to draw a stencil from a picture of a dog, and how she did the eyes made so much more sense. The key is to make more seams around the eyes so that you don’t have to fuss with sticking fabric into a circle. Smart. You can see in the finished product that I had a hard time getting the brown of her irises in there, so they’re pretty hard to see. I also added a seam under her cheek in order to get the fabric into a tight spot, but it makes the rest of the face look pretty flat. If I do it again, I will make more seams up the sides of her nose to give it a bit of depth.
The fabric you use is also very important. I’ve had the Chinese brocade silk for years, and the vintage 50s pink fabric even longer, so I wanted to use what I had on hand. The brocade is gorgeous, but I noticed that if I didn’t cut the fabric long enough, it would fray and come undone. A lot of the weave on the back came apart and I ended up with wisps of it floating through the air and getting up my nose. I also nicked it with my fancy sharp scissors a few times, so I had to be careful with how close I got with trimming.
I also used a chrome marker and some white paint to help identify her eyes better. It’s mixed media anyway, right?
I also didn’t cut enough fabric to trim the edges, so I think I will stick some thick black ribbon around the border so you don’t see the foam. I bought some frames but I think they’re too shallow/the foam is too thick, so the next step is to try to router out the inside supports for the frames, and then cut the foam in half. Had I been thinking, I would have bought the 1/2″ foam, but I sometimes get fixated and want to get the exact same supplies as the example.
