Catching Up

I'm finally getting around to finishing up some quilts started over the summer.

This was started using a stencil and Walnut Ink, shown earlier in my blog. I added a curved frame, using reverse applique, and the border fabric was sun-printed using blades of grass and clover. Spelling out Basil and outlining blocks with beads added something extra.

This also was started using a stencil and Walnut Ink. I didn't like the effect it gave on the blue fabric, so decided to use the butterfly as an applique. The background is a hand-dye fabric where the dyes were swished around to mix with each other. This fabric was then reverse appliqued to yellow hand-dye fabric for the sun. The branch was fused and then appliqued.

Have more in the series that are a work in progress. Please come back to see them.

Batty about Batiks

Tuesday I batiked fabric again. It was such fun before, I had to do more.

This time I started with previous hand-dyed fabric as my first layer. I started with smaller designs first using soy wax and a tjanting tool. Overdyed the fabric with a darker color and let dry in the sun. I did some of the fabrics with a second layer of soy wax and larger designs and overdyed the fabric with a second darker dye.

These were done with one layer of soy wax.

And these were done with several layers of soy wax and dyes.

I feel I had more success this time around with the batiking. I learned to start off waxing with smaller designs first and with each layer of wax making the designs larger, also starting off with lighter dye colors and progressing darker.

Summer is more than half over and sooo many more surface design techniques to try!!!

We're in the middle of a heat wave now so I'll go back in the air-conditioning and continue with a work in progress.

Shag Rag Workshop

Tuesday, my guild held a class with Patricia Rodgers. She was a National Educator for Sulky and has been on numerous television shows and produced several instructional videos.

I took this class to learn about different threads and ways to use them.
The class project was a "shag rag bag",

but I'm making a small wall hanging. Its still a work in progress, but here is a picture of it.

She demonstrated scrunching fabrics, "flash-trash"(little snippets of fabric fused to Steam-A-Seam2 and torn into pieces), hangy thread, quilt, applique and embellishing all at once with all different kinds of threads.

Everyone had different styles of fabrics, making each unique. Below are a few of the other students samples.

The class was fun, very informative and liberating, all rules of general quilting were ignored.

If you have a chance to take her class, go for it.