While at the retreat, I attended a demo about dying fabric with Sharpies (permanent markers) and rubbing alcohol (isopropyl.) I already knew alcohol would make Sharpies bleed, but I’d never seen this particular application. This is the sort of result you can expect. Cool, right? And this is how you do it: – Stretch fabric…
In addition to the gorgeous indigo, my fabrics dyed with Procion mx dyes also turned out well. I didn’t have time to thoroughly wash them at first, so I draped them around my back porch for drying. So pretty! Believe it or not, these fabrics were made by simply wadding and scrunching up a piece…
Wow! Wait till you see these fabulous results from our dying day. We began to get an idea of what lay ahead as Gabriele unfolded her pieces and hung them up. Aren’t these awesome? Gabriele used colored fabric for some of her dying, like the yellow and blue one below. And check this one out!…
Are you a Star Trek fan? Do you know about Klingons? They’re a very fierce fighting clan who’s motto is “It is a good day to die.” So, when I headed out the door to a recent dye session my husband pronounced it as “a good day to dye.” And indeed, it was. The weather…
I’m getting ready for a shibori dying day with my art quilt buddies. (Shibori is a type of dying which uses manipulation of the fabric to resist the dye in certain areas. Tie dye is an example.) There are a TON of ways to fold, roll, scrunch, and stitch fabric prior to dying to get…
Now, THIS is exciting stuff! After doing deconstructed screen printing with randomly created screens, I decided to draw on my last screen, with a syringe. This is a technique I learned in a DSP class with Kerr Grabowski. That’s my screen above. I drew on it with very thick black dye. In fact, it was…
I recently got to play with deconstructed screen printing again, and I got some pretty cool results. The process is easy, but it also involves a fair amount of dyes, equipment, and set up. Here’s a brief video overview. You start by purposely allowing thickened dye to dry in your screen. A random design is…
Have you ever been to a class and realized you left the most appropriate fabrics at home? This happened to me when I took a class from Elizabeth Barton. I learned a lot about abstracting and designing and had a great paper “sketch” I wanted to interpret in fabric. Per Elizabeth’s instructions, I worked up…
My latest abstract piece is progressing nicely. After creating the sketch and selecting fabrics, I began to compose the background on my design wall. Here it is, completed. Next, I made tracing paper patterns of the two undulating lines I wanted to add. It’s coming along, don’t you think? I was happy with this design…
Maybe I need more fabric. My husband would LAUGH at the idea! With about 1000 pieces of fabric SURELY I must have anything I could imagine, right? Well, maybe not. I’m used to working with lots of small pieces (think palm-sized to hand-sized,) but my next quilt would probably need much larger pieces. I needed…