Paper and Fiber Arts: Improvisational Surface Design

Sunday, July 30, 2023

Improvisational Surface Design

Very rarely do I abandon other projects to work on something new. Recently, an opportunity presented itself that caused me to work on something unexpected. This recently happened because of a challenge posed by the Improv group of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. The July prompt was 'Surface Design'. My piece incorporated both improvisational quilting and surface design. This piece is mainly green because I am also working in a series with color as the focus. It felt like green should be used this time.

This project inspired me to try a bunch of different things in one piece. For me, this is part of the fun. What starts as an experiment with materials to learn how they work together becomes an exploration of techniques and outcomes.

The first step was to see how a variety of media would work with this stencil on a piece of PFD Kona cotton. The Stabilo chunky pencils and the Derwent Inktense pencils worked as expected with no bleeding. Once the Inktense pencils and Inktense blocks were activated with GAC 100 the color did move. The Crayola Fabric, Marvy, Sharpie Stained, and Jacquard Tee Juice markers bled slightly but were easy to control. The Dye-na Flow is more challenging to control. I use water brushes filled with the dye and this can saturate the fabric quickly.

Next, after digging in my scrap box, I found several strips to sew together. Then, Pellon fusible web was applied to the back and a circle was cut using an Accuquilt die. This process was repeated on the stenciled piece. In order to have some variety with the circle sizes and fabrics, I used a set of smaller circle dies (Hero Arts) that are usually used with paper. They worked great. Both the large pieces and the additional smaller ones were attached to a larger piece of solid white fabric. Additional stenciling of circles and partial circles offers visual continuity. Adding stitched circles to the piece continued the theme. These circles were made with an embroidery sewing module using a wide range of thread colors.

I got a little carried away with adding circles and the finished quilt was too busy for my liking. It measures about 16 x 17 inches. The picture above shows it on my design wall.

Close up

The busy little quilt needed to be mounted onto a solid background to give it some space. After auditioning a number of options, I decided to use a previously painted wood panel, measuring 24" square. The sides are now painted black. I layered a piece of batting and black fabric together and quilted it enough to hold it together. The edges were turned prior to quilting. Then I attached the small art quilt to it and glued the entire thing onto the wooden frame.

The finished piece on a blue wall in my kitchen

Next month's prompt is "Sunshine". I am excited to try something with Tyvek for this challenge. What encourages you to work outside your normal process?