Irises in a Vase

I used the same method for the Irises as with the previous herb quilts, (stencil, Walnut Ink spray, and painting the flowers). I cut out the background fabric to showcase the irises in a vase. The doily under the vase was a sun printed fabric using a paper doily. The vase is sitting on a table. I appliqued around the vase with a decorative circle stitch to give it a cut glass effect. The doily was satin stitched in white thread.

I added the green borders around three sides and the bottom border out of a sun printed fabric using construction fencing.

Various quilting designs were used and the quilt was finished with a facing.

Finished Flying Triangles

The last few days have been spent on deciding the quilting for Flying Triangles. I did some curves around the triangles in gradated values of orange threads. Next I quilted some straight lines inside the curve center and on the left edge with blue variegated thread.

I used facing for the edge finishing. Lines of buttons made from shrink film completed this quilt.

Flying Triangles

I started by hand-dyeing fabric in a 12 step gradation of navy dye. From them I used the darkest, medium and the last 4 lightest fabrics.



I wanted a little more interest for the dark and medium fabrics, which would be used for the background. I did leaf rubbings randomly around using a slate blue Shiva paintstick.


After letting the paint cure, I heatset the fabric.

Playing around with the lightest blue fabrics, I cut strips in varying widths and lengths and fused them to the background.

I then made varying sizes of triangles from a fabric by Caryl Bryer Fallert of orange values. I wanted the triangles to curve and show distance. This took many reconfigurations to get the effect I was looking for.
Quilting is my next step. I have a few ideas, but need to develop them further. Finished quilt will be in a future blog.

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.

Snow-Dyeing

During our last snow fall I decided to try snow-dyeing. Recently there has been a lot of hiipe about it on the web and it really intrigued me. So, when the snow started falling I got out my dyes and snow shovel and got to work.

My first attempts I mixed full concentrated dyes with snow and covered the mixture over soda ash soaked fabric.

Fushia and sky blue on the left and sky blue on the right.

Fushia and fire red on the left and fire red and golden yellow on the right.



Black

I waited till the snow melted, about 4 hours, then left the fabric cure overnight. Rinsed, washed, and ironed. Below are the results.

Fushia and sky blue.

Sky blue accordion pleatedFire red and golden yellow.Black, it came out a purple

Second try I diluted the dye with water, as I would doing low water immersion dyeing, mixed with snow and covered soda ash soaked fabric. Chino and gold yellow

Ultra violet

Navy and gold yellow

Burgundy and gold yellow

I let the snow melt (again about 4 hours) and let cure overnight. Rinsed, washed and ironed.
Below are these results.

Chino and gold yellow

Ultra violet

Navy and gold yellow

Burgundy and gold yellow

The results were not quite as dark as the first ones but gave just as interesting results.

Using this method, you can't get duplicate results, but thats the fun with this method.

Can't wait for it to snow again!!

Marbleous

Moving on to the next experiment ---- this is marbling fabric with dye-na-flow paints and shaving cream.

Using a layer of unscented shaving cream smoothed out, I added drops of paint then swirled it around. I placed fabric over this and patted the fabric down so it would absorb the paint. I peeled the fabric off and scraped any excess shaving cream from the fabric.

Below are the results.

Should anyone have this much fun?

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!