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?

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Products Used:

Inktense Blocks

Inktense Pencils

GAC 100

Stabilo Woody 3 in 1 Pencils

Crayola Fabric Markers

Marvy Fabric Markers

Sharpie Stained Markers

Jacquard Dye-na Flow

Pentel Water Brushes

Jacquard Tee Juice Markers

Extra Deep Cradle Panel

Bullseye Circle Dies

Studio 2 Fabric Cutter

Hero Arts Circle Infinity Dies

Hero Arts Stacked Circle Stencil

Hero Arts - Stencils - Stacked Circles
Scrapbook.com

Painting on Fabric Using Pigment Powder

Lately, I have been working with fabric. It has provided a great outlet for me to play with my stash by dyeing, painting, quilting, incorporating surface design techniques, and anything else which I can think up. Today, I decided to try using Colourarte's Primary Elements pigment powder to paint on some fabric that I had dyed a few months ago.

Hand dyed denim on left and cotton scarf on right

The original fabrics were white or off-white and now they are beautiful shades of blues and a bit of pink/magenta.  These seemed like great choices to paint upon.

Obviously, blue is a first choice for me when it comes to adding additional color! I used several different colors of Primary Elements but chose to stick with a cool palette. (Maybe even a 'cold' palette, as in sherbert! *See note below.) At the time, I was thinking of a tone on tone effect.  But as I was painting, I realized that more contrast would be more interesting so I grabbed some solid fabric to paint, too.  Those pictures are below the scarf.

Stargazer, Bolivian Blue and Green Pearl Primary Elements on tie-dyed scarf

In order to see how the rich colors of the pigment powder would work with a colorless extender I mixed about a teaspoon of the pigment powder with about a tablespoon of medium.  This is what I used:

It was fun to mix the powders and see the results. Sometimes paint colors change quite a bit when they are dry, so the anticipation of the end product was part of the fun! I decided to add a bit of white Brusho Colourcraft powder to the pigment powder to see if it would change the opacity much.  It may have been that I did not add enough but it wasn't a very noticeable change.

Forest Green Primary Elements is most noticeable on the top left piece

The pink denim fabric was left over from when my 11 year old daughter and I made an apron together several years ago. She wants me to make a book bag from today's painting experiment!  I love how the large stencil from this month's Stencil Girl Club collection made this project even easier!  The colors of the fabrics and the paints remind me of summer days with ice cream and sprinkles.

The lighting is wonky, but this is actually an intense pink color!

*Colourarte is having a "sherbert challenge" and I thought of Raspberry when I pulled out the fabric. The painted colors showed up a lot better on the solid color fabric.  And the picture below is a better representation of the background fabric!

The large piece of blue dyed denim in the top couple of pictures was painted also. But I will share the outcome of that on another day when I have sewn it into something!
I hope you have a wonderful, warm day with a cold treat! Thank you for stopping by today!
Have a wonderful day!
Beverly

Creative Roundup - Lots of Photographs

For lack of a better post title, the following is some of what I have been doing the last few months.

Dyeing scarves

Chenilled a puppy quilt from hand dyed flannel

 The puppy quilt was for the little fellow pictured below.  We got him from a rescue and he turned out to be sick.  I spent several weeks tending to him and cleaning up the evidence of his tummy troubles.  I am happy to report that he is doing great, now. 

 

New Puppy

 It has been a long time since I dyed fabric, maybe more than a decade! The process is really fun.  It was nice to ease back into it with some scarves and a little bit of cotton yardage. Because of the dyeing success, I decided that I would like to try painting on fabric. This shirt was very plain and off-white is not a very flattering color for me. Jacquard paints to the rescue!

Fabric painting with Stencil Girl stencils

Front of shirt was done with a tiny stencil from the March Stencil Girl Club set that I moved around a lot to make it into a flower-like shape. The back was from another stencil from March's Club set.

Back of shirt painted with Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow

There isn't a lot of continuity in my workflow, but here is some more evidence of how I spent my time since the start of the year.

 

Art quilt bed topper for my mother's 80th birthday

 The bed topper pictured here was a work based upon what I thought were important moments or objects that formed part of my mother's life. Like so many things in life, it isn't the entire story, but hopefully part of a good story.

Freehand cut orchid applique for the quilt

3 dimensional aspects to the quilt include this little pillow

Photos printed on fabric make up part of the background

 

My helper needed to pre-fur it 

 For the most part, I feel the time was well spent.  It is nice to be able to spend time following creative pursuits.

And playing with animals.

 

Happy Puppy

House cat playing with daughter

 
Thank you for visiting!
Beverly