Sometimes I dye specialty fabrics: those that are almost a full design and that will be big players in a future design. After a class with Pat Pauly, I’m now designing such fabrics to have larger patterns. (These are harder for me to use, but do wonderful things in a composition, once I get it…
When dying fabric there are two types I want to produce: yardage, and specialty. Yardage has a mostly all over pattern and can easily be cut up and used. Specialty looks almost like a whole cloth design, with thought given to composition and such. These yellow pieces fall firmly into the yardage camp. The top…
While dying fabric I’m learning a lot! Some of it comes from books and some of it I stumble upon. Case in point, trying to mix thickened dye colors directly on the fabric. I had heard that they wouldn’t really mix in this way, but I was feeling lazy and had to give it a…
SAQA’s “Forced to Flee” exhibit is very powerful. It recently opened in Melbourne, FL at the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts. As you might imagine, many of the pieces had to do with the refugee crisis, but others showcased the horrors of war, and the power of nature. There are 30+ pieces in the…
I’ve heard it said that “God is in the details,” and I believe it. In addition to the HUGE scenery we saw on our trip to the American southwest, we also appreciated many smaller details. Like the trees leafing out in a remote canyon. The petroglyphs that are over 1000 years old. Each motif is…
Is it possible to take a bad photo of the Grand Canyon? I kinda think not. Especially when the sun is low, the shadows are long, and the weather is perfect. My husband and I were lucky enough to visit it on just such a day. The temperatures were perfect and the crowds were light,…
Remember when I posted about making small fabric collages and then cropping them to get abstract design ideas? Well, I decided to use one of my examples as the springboard for a new quilt. I used this photo collage of tropical foliage. Using photo editing, I removed the color to focus on the design lines….
Pat Pauly is a WEALTH of knowledge, so I really learned a lot when I took a 5 day dyeing/printing class with her. First up: colors look different when wet vs. dry. Leslie’s samples served as examples. Bigger can be better. This piece, below, is about 31″ x 45″. So, Pat finally got me to…
My dyeing/print making class with Pat Pauly was amazing. She’s SO comfortable with thickened dyes and what she can do with them that it was almost hard to keep up. This was the first demo, about using stencils. She doesn’t use them with a screen, but just hangs on to a corner and scrapes dye…
In my last post, I showed you my latest abstract quilt in-progress. Here it is finished: Slightly Unexpected. I added hand stitched and padded black circles to keep the white one company. The rest of the background is pretty densely stitched. I’m happy with this quilt and anxious to try out some more abstract design. Ellen…