Fantasy Forest Part 1

During the summer I sun-printed a leaf forest using different hues of browns and brownish greens. Wasn't sure how I was going to use it at the time, but thought that it came out interesting.

Later in the fall, I sun-printed some 11" blocks with same or similar leaves but used bright hues of yellow/orange, yellow/green, red, green, red/violet, and purple.  Wasn't sure how I would use these either.

As I was reshuffling fabrics and cleaning my studio at the end of the year, I came across the sunprints and stuck them up on the design wall.  Ideas started jumping in my head, so needless to say the cleaning was forgotten.  I went through more of my stash and pulled out brown and green fabrics that would go with the background colors of my "forest".  To blend in the squares of sun prints I looked for a multicolored fabric. 

I added a small sashing around the "forest" with the multicolor, then started arranging the square sunprints around for borders.  The spaces in between them were filled with the brown and green batiks.  This left the corners open and a decision on how to work them.  I tried a simple square patch design with the batiks and multicolored fabric.  This looked good, and carried the colors around the border.

I started thinking about the quilting, but the center wasn't giving the feel of a forest.  So I traced the leaves and made stencils.  Using a black Shiva paintstick, I made shadow trees to give more depth.  After finishing this I stood back and could now see a forest.

Quilting decisions need to be made.  Come back for the results.

New Quilt completed

After machine quilting the background with a pantograph for the sky and a grid for grass, I got to work on the stone house. 
I decided to use Texture Magic to make the stones 3 dimensional.  I drew the stones onto the Texture Magic then layered light weight batting, then fabric on top, turned it over so Texture Magic was on top and stitched the design.  Now the magic!  With a steam iron, I held the iron over the layers with the Texture Magic on top and steamed away.  The Texture Magic shrunk and gave my house fabric the look of stones.



I did this for the front, side, and chimney.  Before appliqueing onto the quilt, I free-motion stitched between the stones to give the look of mortar.  I then set in the windows and door.  Next I appliqued the house to the background with a zigzag stitch.

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The roof was layered with a piece of flannel and I stitched shingles. To give this more of an aged look, I brushed black paintstick along the edges.

Flowers were added for more interest, and these I made dimensional also, using 2 pieces of fabric with fusible web in between.  Beads were sewn to the centers of morning glories going up the chimney.

I bound the quilt, sewed on a sleeve and label and I was finally done.

Happy Holidays to everyone!!

Dyeing Again

The past few days I've been discharging, overdyeing and doing 3 layer parfaits. 

I started with previously dyed fabrics for discharging.  I started with decolorant and stenciled a few fabrics.  After they dried I steamed the fabric to activate the decolorant.  I was not very satisfied with the results. 

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I had expected a much clearer design result.  It could have been that I didn't use enough, but felt if I used more, it would have leaked under the stencil and given a blurred image.  I'll have to try again using a different approach. 

I went back to my usual discharging of using soft scrub wigth stencils, thermofax screens and circles with a bleach pen.  The soft scrub reacts fast, then rinse and soak in anti-chlor to stop the bleach reaction.  I never know what the discharge coloring will be, but thats part of the excitement. 

My plan after discharging was to overdye the fabrics with thickened dyes and the same stencils.  I mixed the thickener with diluted dyes for the colors I wanted.  Some were dark enough to work, others weren't and didn't show up.  Lesson 1 - learned that I should have used straight dye solution with the thickener to make it more concentrated.

Below are ones that did turn out good.  A couple I overdyed several times with different colors.

I also fold dyed fabric using different folding methods , then dipped the edges into the dyes.  Lesson 2- don't squeeze out excess dye.  this spreads the dye too much and end up with mushy designs.

Towards the end I didn't squeeze the fabric and got clearer results. 

The last day I used up extra dye and made a couple sets of 3 layer parfaits.  On the right I started with first layer of orange/brown mix, layer 2-dark red, layer 3- brown.  Each layer absorbed some of the next color layer and worked out good.   On the lef,t I started with green, layer 2-navy, and layer 3-purple.  The colors were too closely related and color mixes didn't come out as clearly.

The next ones I used half yard pieces instead of fat quarters.  Left side I started with yellow/green, layer 2- dark green, and layer 3-brown.  the colors flowed nicely through all layers.  The right side layer 1-red/violet, layer 2-purple, and layer 3-gray.  These 3 fabrics basically kept that layers color.

I was happy with most of my work and fabrics that didn't turn out I decided to paint instead.  It was a productive few days and am now waiting for some sunny days with little humidity to try flour paste resist.

New Quilt

Earlier this summer I dyed fabrics in 2 diferent color runs, blue/violet and yellow/green. I used various combinations of blue - sky blue, cobalt, electric blue and grape, reds - chinese red, light red, fire red, and fushia, yellow - lemon yellow and golden yellow, and black to get a large variety of hues and values of each color.

These fabrics were sewn to create a pieced background. The blocks were arranged to form a light source coming from the top left down to the bottom right. To me piecing the background gives more subtlty of the value changes.

The focus of the quilt is an old stone smoke house. Pictures were taken and enlarged for my pattern.

I want the house to look very dimensional and have been making samples of different tehniques to get this effect.

Return for the results.

Falling Petals

SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Association) is going to have an online auction starting September 12,2011. They are accepting quilts that are a maximum of 12" x 12" and you must be a member. The proceeds go towards funding travel exhibits, catalogs, and out reach programs.

I haven't been a member for that long, a little over a year, and felt that entering a quilt was a good way to help support the group.

Below is the quilt I entered.

I used 4 crazy patch blocks that I meander quilted, gessoed, then stenciled a leaf branch over. Around the branch I stitched on small silk flowers with a bead in each center to hold them on. I stitched veins in each leaf with a lighter shade of green thread to make them stand out.

A detail of it is below.

Go to www.saqa.com for more details on the auction and how you can bid on one of the many quilts for sale.

Weeping Cherry Tree Quilt

My neighbor has a beautiful weeping cherry tree in the corner of her yard. Springtime, its pink blossoms cover the branches; summer, the leaves are lush; fall, the leaves are golden and orange; and winter shows the skeleton of the tree. Pictures were taken each season, fabrics dyed, discharged, overdyed, painted, stenciled and stamped. I had the makings for a quilt. I started with the pictures and photo enhanced the colors, cropped and used filters to get pictures from each season. I printed them on cotton lawn fabric. These were fused onto background fabrics with curvy edges.

I pieced background squares using a crazy patch design and sewed them together with the photo picture pieces.

Something was wrong. It wasn't coming out like the picture in my mind. I looked at it for days and couldn't come up with a solution. It was driving me crazy, time to step back and work on something else.

The quilt top hung on my design wall for a while, I needed some input. Two of my quilting friends, Martha and Eda critiqued the quilt for me. Using their comments, I went back into the piece. The large spring photo I made brighter since this was the focal point. The pieced background was too chaotic and distracting, so I toned it down with gesso. I then stamped leaves over it to take away some of the brightness of the pinks and reds.

This was better but I still was not overjoyed with it. I should have just given up. But, I had put a lot of work into it, so it was getting quilted. I stitched in the ditch around the pictures and meander quilted with dark green thread in the background. Because of the gesso painted on the background, the stitching is not good. I couldn't keep a good tension and sometimes it would skip stitches or the thread would break. The pictures needed quilting to keep the density of the quilting even. For these I used the braches as a guide.

Below is the final quilt.

Even though this quilt wasn't a success, I learned from it.

1. Not to use a busy background, the color values were too varied in each block.

2. Make sure my pictures are clear without distracting elements in the background.

3. Stitch first then paint on gesso. The gesso makes the fabrics stiff which makes quilting irregular.

It Snowed, So I Snow-dyed

Last Monday morning I woke to snow-----so instead of working on a quilt (anything not to work on that quilt) I did some snow-dyeing. There wasn't that much snow and it was melting fast. I soda soaked a couple of yards of fabric, mixed dyes and scraped snow off the driveway. I used a combo of red/violet and yellow/orange. The second piece I used blue/violet and yellow/green. I set these to the side to melt and do their thing. When I looked outside the snow had stopped and was quickly melting (faster than it was on my fabric). Tuesday after my guild meeting I rinsed the fabrics.

My dh came out to the garage and advised me that it was to snow again Wednesday, so instead of washing my fabrics I let them air dry and got more fabric ready for the snow.

I woke Wednesday to more snow than Monday so I decided to dye 4 more pieces.

Orange and green

Orange and blue/green

Orange and blue/violet

Red/orange and yellow/green

I had a little dye left over (can't let it go to waste) so I did a 3 layer parfait.

Left side is Layer 1 - orange, middle is Layer 2 - fushia with a little blue, right side is Layer 3 - blue. These are dark saturated colors.

I enjoyed my 2 days of snow-dyeing, but lets face it -------

I'M SICK OF WINTER!!!!

Now back to the quilt.