Holding My Mouth Just Right

I recently added paint to a quilt!  Gulp!  This is something I’ve only done once or twice, so I definitely had to get my courage up.

It helped that I had done a bunch of painted exercises a few months ago.  So, I did some practice samples, held my mouth just right and gave it a go.

I had started this quilt at Quilting by the Lake, back in July, and had completed the fabric composition.  After putting the quilt away for a few months, this is where I picked it  up.  I wanted to add some sheer swirling elements to the background.  With paint.  Gulp again.

I had previously done some experimenting about how to best add a sheer layer with monoprinting. From that I knew that a certain scrap of shelf liner worked well.  Like this.  I thought it looked quite good.

But, it pretty much disappeared in the lighter patterned areas.  Clearly, I’d need to beef it up some how.  Back to experimenting.

I figured out I could stencil on another light coat of paint to get my desired effect.  Like this.

I used freezer paper to mask out the quilt areas that I wanted to stay paint free.

And this was the result. I was happy with it.

At this point, it was time to start thinking about the quilting design.  I’ll show you what I did in the next post, plus something a little unexpected.

Ellen Lindner