Archive | January, 2021

Round Two

By Ellen Lindner on January 19, 2021 in Uncategorized

After a disappointing attempt at making a quilt featuring my large-scaled hand dyed fabrics, I dramatically down sized and tried again.

This time I switched the color proportions, using turquoise as my primary color and fuchsia as the accent. I still found it hard to incorporate the leaf fabric. Maybe because it had a lighter background? As you can see, I quickly over worked it.

Have you heard the saying, “If something’s not working out (visually) remove your favorite thing?” Yeah. I slowly considered that I might need to remove the fuchsia leaf fabric and eventually did so, (reluctantly.) And, of course, things got much easier after that.

The background progressed well and I was very happy with it. It even showed off my fabrics, right?

On to a focal point. And I had the perfect specialty fabric for it.

But one strip of perfect fabric clearly couldn’t carry the whole piece. I knew I’d have to cut it into pieces to add some energy and to improve the composition.

BTW, I’m calling this “The robbing Peter to Pay Paul photo.” It shows what’s left of the original composition on the left design wall, as I reworked it on the right, using many of the previously cut fabrics.

OK, so I needed to mix things up a little. I decided to expand the color palette and to add additional smallish pieces. A quick audition confirmed this as the correct direction. Didn’t it gain a lot of energy from that?

I committed to cutting smaller shapes and I was really liking where this was going.

I was getting close. After finalizing the arrangement, I took lots of photos of the accent pieces and lifted them all off. Then I quilted the background with straight lines. At one point I put the background back on the design wall, but accidentally got it upside down (below.) I decided I liked that better.

Here’s the final arrangement pinned, and ready for gluing, then stitching/quilting.

I’ve had quite a time thinking of a name. Any suggestions? I’m leaning toward Underwater Dance, Shallow Water Dance, or just Water Dance. Do you think any of those work?

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Don’t you love my new lights on my design walls? I LOVE them!!! (See more of my recent studio revamp on my video page.)

A Fabric-Inspired Quilt

By Ellen Lindner on January 14, 2021 in Uncategorized

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a specialty fabric or two can be the primary inspiration for an entire quilt. And that’s what I wanted to try.

This is sort of what I had in mind. I had intentionally dyed some large scale fabrics in order to try my hand at this. Plus, I had a few from earlier dye sessions. I thought I could do something with these, keeping the large scale pieces more or less intact, so their designs would still show.

I put my muslin support fabric up on my design wall (nearly 4′ x 5′) and started auditioning fabrics. I almost immediately removed the large circles from the mix since I thought the colors looked a little muddy.

Hmm. I could see that the light blue fabric with fuchsia leaves was standing out A LOT. What to do? (Note that all fabrics are just folded and pinned in place at this point.)

I made the highlight fabric smaller. And, of course, added the circles back. (Can you say “trial and error?)

I was loving the colors, but the composition was definitely lacking. I thought it needed some variety of scale, so I made some small units with scraps. (These are just glued to one another.)

Well, they look pretty exciting don’t they? But, how to best use them?

Those little pieces definitely added energy, but everything was looking pretty messy at this point. I decided I needed to commit to CUTTING fabrics, so I could see it all better.

Which is when I realized I had gotten way off track.

I was loving the colors, but I was having a terrible time using those large scale prints. Finally, I decided that my fabrics just weren’t large enough for this size quilt.

So, I started again, at about one quarter the original size.

I could immediately see that this was much more viable. On to round two.

BTW, I don’t fret when I have to rework something. Each “detour,” as I call them, has value. I learn from them. Typically, I’m excited to use that new knowledge as I plow ahead into the next thing.

How do you react to restarts?

Ellen Lindner

Dying Specialty Patterns

By Ellen Lindner on January 10, 2021 in Uncategorized

Dying specialty fabrics is a lot of fun. Having said that, I don’t think I’m that good at it. And I DEFINITELY am challenged when it comes to using them.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

During my recent dye session I tried to create some specialty fabrics that could either be used together or that could be used as “anchor” fabrics for a quilt.

Like these two.

I was hoping to use them together. These are each 45″ high, so you can see that the scale is pretty large. I was excited about trying them.

I thought this one could be a good anchor fabric. The motifs are smaller, so it will work more like yardage – but not entirely.

I sorta love this blue/green one, below, on the left. It has the feel of yardage, but the large scale “spades” make it less so.

The one on the right looked better when it was wet. The yellow/gold background was much darker and richer. Maybe it will need some over dying down the road.

This fabric was made with something new to me: a mask. A mask is similar to a stencil, but the pattern doesn’t extend all the way to what would be the corners of a printing screen. Which means I didn’t want to screen print with it, because I’d get bit rectangles of color, with the delicate design masked out. Instead, I applied the dye loosely with the sponge. This allowed me to merge one color into another.

As you can see, I wasn’t careful about preserving the masked designs. Instead, I sponged over some of them with a later color. This gave interesting results. See what I mean in the detail shot below.

I was delighted with the results and will definitely play around with masks some more.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Do you have tips on working with masks? I’d love to hear them.

Artists Reception: You’re Invited

By Ellen Lindner on January 8, 2021 in Uncategorized

My piece, Diversity, was juried into a regional SAQA exhibit called Imagination: 1 x 4. As you might guess, all the pieces are 1 foot wide and 4 feet tall.

There’s a virtual artists’ reception on January 9th, at 2 PM, and you’re invited. You’ll get to see the art and the juror will be speaking so I think it will be interesting,

The reception is free, but you do have to register, however. Click here to do so.

Hope to see you there!
Ellen Lindner

The Basics: Dying Yardage

By Ellen Lindner on January 7, 2021 in Uncategorized

In my mind there are two basic types of dyed fabrics: those that can be used for yardage, and those that have specialized patterns. These are a few of my yardage pieces. They fall into this category because I could cut pieces out of them in a variety of places and still get pretty similar designs.

This navy grid is an over dye. The original stripey blue was too dull for my liking, so I added navy on top.

The navy, green, and rust below are also over dyes.

This yellow fabric was a commercial fabric that I tried a lavender rubbing on. It DID NOT look good, but it mostly faded when I washed it. This time, I tried it with an orangey-red. I think it works and that it will be useful.

The navy print, above, was stenciled and the background orange was added last. I would have liked it to be a little brighter, so this one might get an over dye down the road.

I work with thickened dyes. The thickness allows me to stencil and paint with them, knowing they’ll stay where I put them, without bleeding. But, I like that bleeding effect, too, so I did an experiment to see if I could get thickened dyes to bleed effectively. I sprayed the fabric and dye painted the two sides in blue and yellow.