Start of New Quilt

Over the summer I started dyeing fabric for a new quilt. After dyeing I had taken some fabrics and discharged and overdyed them. These I wrote about in earlier posts when I was working on them.

The end of last month and the first week of this month I reviewed all of these fabrics and decided some still needed some more texture on them. I got out the paints and paintsticks, stencils, stamps, and rubbing plates and got to work.

I used irredescent paintsticks and rubbing plates over some of the fabrics.

Next I used paint, both metallic and matte with stencils. Last was stamps and paint.

After they all dried, they were heat set.

With the dyed, overdyed, discharged, rubbed, stencilled, and stamped fabrics gave me a diverse group to make this quilt.

Now I can get down to the sewing.

Will keep you informed.

Dyeing Results

I finally rinsed, washed, dried, and pressed the fabrics I dyed last week. All the heat from last week kept me at a slower pace. Most all the fabric I was very pleased with, some not as much.

The screen print and one of the monoprinting I really liked. The overdyed colors are very light which as what I was aiming for.

The colors don't photograph well because of the lightness. I did learn though when printing with black I need a more concentrated dye solution for it to come out black and not a very dark gray.The combed through monoprinting that was overdyed with red/orange and red/violet came out darker than what I hoped for. This will probably be used cut up.
The two fabrics that were dyed upright on foam core turned out okay, but I dyed them on dry soda soaked fabric. I think there would have been more blending if they were wet.

The tray fabric that caught the run-off drips came out very interesting and could be used in many different ways.

The fabric with blue stamps and overdyed yellow, bronze and chino could have been blended more but since the fabric was still damp when I did it, I didn't want a lot of mixing with the blue. Allthough I did like the added green elements inside of circles and ovals.
Next time I'll start with dry fabric and then wait till the stamp prints are dry before dyeing over it.

The 3-layered fabrics came out great. They speak for themselves.

The cup dyeing of oranges and grays came out just as I expected, some mottling and dark to light. The nickel and pewter ranges turned out great.

The oranges were stronger than expected, was going for some corals and salmons, but they are beautiful.

All said and done I was pleased with my work and experiments. The heat is still oppressive so I'll work in my studio till it cools a little.

Martha is done with all her rinsing, etc. also. Go to http://marthahallart.com/blog to see her results.

Another Play Day

This weeks experiment was trying monoprinting. I used a gelatin mold as my print plate from Rayna Gilman's book"Creating your own hand-printed cloth". The technique was simple, make a mold with non-flavored gelatin, spread some paint over it, make an impression on the paint and press fabric over the mold. I used previously hand-dyed fabric, and seta color and opague paints.

The first print I used bubble wrap on a lavender fabric and violet paint.


Second print I used flower stamps on white fabric and a blue paint. Around the edges I stamped excess paint from the stamps to give a negative print.

The last set I used a green fabric and a fern and an unknown weed and then ghost printed each.

To end the day I sun-printed on a batik with some weed leaves with an olive green paint.

This technique gave some great results and a wiggly-giggly feeling. Everything is fun with jello!

Play Day Experiments

Last Tuesday I had a play day with some art quilt friends. Each brought some art supplies and fabric to experiment with paints, inks, fabric markers, stamps, stencils, etc.

I tried some Tsukineko spray inks, spraying around the negative parts of stencils. I used many different colors, some I borrowed.
Above is sage sprayed with lilac walnut ink.

Oregano with cornflower walnut ink.

Carnations with cherry blossom walnut ink.

With the exception of the bugs, the fabrics are different yellow/green hand dyed fabric. The bugs are light blue hand dyed fabric.

The next day I outlined my stencils with a Sharpie black ultra fine marker and put in details.

Moth with cherry blossom walnut ink.

I then painted the insides of the stencils with Tsukineko inks.

Morning glories sprayed with terra cotta walnut ink.

Iris with eucalyptus walnut ink.

I also played around with stamping using Distress Ink Pads. Wasn't too happy with the results of what I made but it gave me some experience using the stamps and ink pads and the fun of experimenting without feeling it has to be made into a quilt.

I'm very happy with how the spray inks came out and will continue with the other flowers and bugs next rainy day.

Result from stamping

This is a quilt that developed from my playing with the stamps I made.

I stamped a ripple design onto a tie-dyed fabric I had made a while ago that was added to my stash. I then stamped a small fish onto the left side, stenciled a larger fish with metalic paints on the right side, and in the middle used foil to make the largest fish. I fused some rocks and reeds on and used some thread trash to make the cattails.

Yes...... I save the thread knots from my washed fabric.

I used the ripple stamp as my quilting design and quilted it with glitter thread from Superior Thread.

I'm happy how this quilt developed from one stamp.

Stamping

I've been cutting some stamps with plumber's rubber gaskets. I read about this in the last issue of "Quilting Arts" magazine, article "Printing Blocks" by Cynthia St. Charles. Her blog www.cynthiastcharles.com shows examples of some of her work. Fantastic!!

Below is a white PFD fabric that I practiced on. I used Seta Color transparency paint, opaque paint and Distress Ink pads with rubber gasket stamps, speedball speedy cut stamps, safety kut stamps, and magic foam.

I kind of got carried away in cutting out stamps. Its rather addictive.

Using some hand-dyed fabric, I stamped negative stamps onto the fabric.

I love how the dyed fabric shows through giving added interest.

Another piece stamped on the diagonal with some leaf stamps.

This was so fun I'm going to continue. Maybe a quilt idea will come to me.