There’s been a whirlwind of activity around the studio! The Allegheny Portage Railroad Museum pieces are well on their way. The first one is completed. We painted all the black diamonds, then marbled them all.
Once over at the shop, we unrolled it and I applied all of the coats of clear protective finish. This is a real back-breaker. I apply all of my clear coats with a brush so no bubbles occur. That means standing, kneeling or crawling over the entire 400 sq. ft. surface for a period of about 2 hours for each coat. I allow 24 hours of dry time (and recovery time for my back!) between coats. It makes for a LONG week!
I keep thin plastic over the surface to protect it from damage and lint and to allow me to walk over it. We’re almost finished with the second piece. It is 20′ by 20′ 
When we have finished that one, we do it again for the second half of the dining room!
If you are interested in learning how to make a floorcloth, there’s still room in the Rufus Porter Museum’s floorcloth class which I’ll be teaching in a couple of weeks. This will be my third year teaching there. It’s a great little town and the class is a lot of fun. Each student paints a Rufus Porter landscape on a 2′ X 3′ floorcloth.
It’s just thin painter’s plastic.
The splicing is done very carefully using a special high-strength heat tape on the back side. The tricky part is not melting the painted front side!
Hi Lisa, This looks gorgeous as usual! How do you splice two canvas pieces together? Do you use carpet tape underneath? What about the top side? Thanks, any help you give will be greatly appreciated, Cindy