My local art quilt group, the Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists, had a dyeing day recently, at Ruth Anne’s “barn.” We started with Gabriele explaining wet cyanotype to us. It’s similar to sun printing, but with chemically treated fabric that turns dark blue. That is, until you add water to the process. After that the results…
After several interruptions, I was finally able to finish my quilt, Tall Grasses. It was inspired by some of the landscape grasses growing in my neighborhood. When the setting sun hits them, the cream colored heads glow an almost pink. As you can see, I ran with that idea, adding my favorite bright colors, and using…
Most of my designs start with something visual. I’m inspired by a combination of colors, a particular photo, or the pattern of some fabric. I’m not particularly good at (or comfortable with) designing for a particular theme or idea. Yet that is exactly where I found myself a short time ago. I wanted to create…
My latest quilt, Rhythm of the City, is now complete. It’s made almost entirely with fabrics I dyed myself. I’m very happy with both the fabrics and the composition. I added additional pattern and interest with couched heavy black thread. I think it adds a lot. More information about this quilt Audition this quilt in your home…
Now THIS is fun! Scoop up some thickened dye with a stiff squeegee (think large credit card,) and smear it onto some fabric. It spreads into glorious color and makes a very satisfying swishing noise at the same time. I started with yellow and then added yellow-orange,(which looks dark orange when it’s this thick.) But,…
You can’t get it right all the time. And knowing that relieves a certain amount of any perfectionist tendencies. I fully embrace the unexpected “mistakes.” Like this one. This was created with a special type of interfacing stencil. It’s shown wet here, which means it’s darker than it will be after washing. BUT. If you…
After over dyeing fabrics from previous sessions, my ordered fabric arrived and I jumped at the opportunity to make some “new fabric.” That is, starting with plain white fabric. I had plans and was excited to implement them! This one was meant to go with a favorite fabric. Therefore, I repeated the pattern and some of…
I’ve had some good results with my fabric dyeing. I was going to show you the “regular” stuff and save my favorites for last. But who has such restraint? So here they are: my favorite fabrics from my recent bout of dyeing. For the large piece on the left below, my goal was to use…
Now that I’ve started using those new stencils I can show you my results. I started out by over dyeing some of the duds from my previous dyeing session. Like this one. Not horrible, but definitely not exciting either. I simply over dyed it with the same stencil and roughly the same colors. As you…
I have a quilt in mind which will need a variety of black and white, and grey and white fabrics. So, I spread out some white fabric and started applying thickened dye. You’ll recognize the patterns of these first two. They’re done with the same interfacing stencils shown in earlier posts. The grey one, below…