George Weil Blog & FAQs
Welcome to the George Weil Blog FAQs which includes information about the art and craft products sold on this website. There are project ideas, photographs of items created by our customers, product reviews, and step-by-step instructions. See also our USEFUL LINKS page which includes a listing of websites offering information about the products sold on our website, training resources and Guilds.
If there is anything you would like to see included here or if you would like to contribute an item, please email graphics@georgeweil.com
Steam Fixing Acid Dyes
Silk dyes will produce more vibrant colour results than iron fix silk paints. The dyes penetrate the fibres and are locked within the fabric through the steaming process, ensuring greater wash and light fastness. The results of this process far...
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Discharge Paste Recipe
Formosul or Formasol is the active component of Discharge Paste. Discharge Paste is used for removing areas of colour from dyed natural fabrics such as cotton, silk and viscose. Please note that some Procion MX fibre reactive dyes do not...
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Mordants for Natural Dyeing
What is a Mordant? A mordant links chemically with the fibre and creates attachment points which bond with the colourant from natural dyes creating light and wash fast colours. Mordants are also used to set the colours from flowers and...
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Mixed Media Modelling
Imagination is all you need, along with findings from around the home plus many of the materials from this web site. Newspaper and wall paper paste make excellent papier m¢ch© as does paper pulp combined with CMC (Methyl Cellulose) paste...
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Handmade Christmas Crackers
Some of the papers used to make these lovely Christmas Crackers are no longer available from this web site but there are alternative papers that will work equally well. The contrasting papers used to decorate the body of the crackers...
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Painted Flower Canvas Bag
You can paint bags, canvas shoes, t-shirts and more using fabric paints and the following technique. If you’re fed up with High Street fashions and can’t find the colours or styles you want, this is a fun way of customising...
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Hand Painted Tulip Canvas Bag
There are a number of ‘bags for life’ being offered at super markets, but if you want to create a unique and personal design, our canvas bag can be painted with fabric paints. How to Paint your own The design...
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Victoria Sommers’ Polymer Clay Art
We’re always surprised at just how versatile polymer clay really is. Victoria Sommers very kindly sent us some photographs which illustrate this well. Glass and translucent polymer clay These decorative pots have evolved from glass jars and glasses that have...
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Colourful Silk Scarf by Susan Litton
This colourful, tactile scarf has been crafted by Susan Litton. She first spun a small amount of each of the Fibrecrafts silk fibres and then microwave dyed the yarn samples with Acid dye. She knitted the yarn into a long...
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Roz Plant, Batik Artist
Roz Plant (pictured right) emailed us these examples of her quirky batik work. Herself and husband Phil, who is a painter and potter, opened their workshop to the public in May 2008 and more of their work can be viewed...
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Hand Spun, Knitted Sweater
Pat Hodge bought her spinning wheel from Fibrecrafts in September 2002 and set about learning to spin under expert tuition from Phyllis Funnell. Here she proudly shows off her hand-knitted sweater made from the yarn she has spun from Jacob and...
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Hand Spun, Moebius Knitted Scarf
Phyllis Funnell sports her Moebius scarf knitted from a pattern in the ‘Treasury of Magical Knitting’. She hand spun the super soft yarn from grey Alpaca. In hindsight, we should have taken more photos of this lovely lace knitted scarf...
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Glass Paintings by Maisie Parker
Maisie Parker sells her hand painted glass from a small craft shop in Baltimore in South West Cork in Ireland. The stunning effect is created by first drawing a design with outliner. The outliner is allowed to dry before filling...
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Painted Silk Fabric, Liz Cunningham
This hand painted silk bag and scarf were made by Liz Cunningham. These items are part of her bespoke range of hand made silk products. The bag (below-left) makes a feature of the silver gutta outliner, as Liz has used...
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Heat Molded Dyed Polyester, Kojiro Tanaka
Student Kojiro Tanaka visited us to find out the best method for colouring his molded polyester works. We suggested he use the heat transfer paints which contain direct dyes and here is a sample of what he has achieved. Thank...
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Silk Scarves by Katherine Barney
These colourful silk scarves were painted by Katherine Barney with H Dupont Classique Silk Dyes. The top scarf was featured on the cover of the 2006 catalogue. The 2006 Fibrecrafts Catalogue Cover image...
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Kate McNaughton
Kate, combines delicate Japanese seed beads with chunky felted beads – made using wool tops...
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Knitted Scarves by Jo Barrell
Hand-dyed, Silk Boucle Scarf Jo’s hand-dyed Italian Silk Boucle knitted scarf was featured on page 15 of the 2006 Fibrecrafts Catalogue (pictured here, below). She dyed the yarn using the microwave method of low water immersion dyeing with acid dyes...
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Paintings on Silk by Jenny Lacey
These images were sent to us by Jenny Lacey. Her paintings are painted on Pongee silk fabric using Dupont steam fix dyes. In the top image, you can see how the purple dye colour has been faded out on the...
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Angelina Fibres, Wire and Silk Fusion
Angelina fibres are very versatile and can be used in a number of ways. The iridescent Angelina fibre is very soft can be fused together to make sheets of web-like paper, angel wings, incorporated into other fibres for needle felting...
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