Adventure Quilter
Ellen Lindner uses fabric the way a painter uses paint, with extraordinary results
I’m SO happy with my latest quilt, Fragrant Canopy.
It started as one piece of fabric which I dyed/printed. That fabric makes up the left two-thirds of the completed quilt.
I had great fun working on the details, especially adding some black hand stitching.
I love everything about this quilt! Not only the results, but also the process and the things I learned.
See larger images and purchase information.
Ellen Lindner
I recently enjoyed a visit to Harrisonburg, VA, to see the “Let the Sun Shine In” exhibit. The artists in this exhibit are all members of Studio Art Quilt Associates, and I am one of them. Here I am with my piece, Florida Native #2. It was made with commercial fabrics and one that I created with breakdown printing. The vein shadows were created with black tulle.
That’s Mary Ritter’s Tea Time hanging behind my shoulder.
I estimate about 30 quilts were in the exhibit, and they were all displayed well.
Partial list of makers, L-R: unknown (1,) Mary Ritter, Ellen Lindner, Jayne Gaskins, unknown. I’m sorry that I didn’t note all the makers of these quilts. If you see yours, please let me know and I’ll add the info.
This piece, by Paula Dean, had a great sense of light. It’s called Brighter Days…Just Around the Corner.
Paula used a wonderful array of techniques to create texture. This was very compelling and it drew you in for closer scrutiny.
Jenny Perry used strong colors to make her striking piece, Lac Le Jeaune Sunrise.
I’ll show you more images in the next post.
By the way, this exhibit runs just a few more days – through December 23rd, 2022.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. See my quilt in-progress.
I’ve been working on incorporating a variety of motifs and colors into one piece of dyed fabric and I finally got one I really love.
I rotated it 90 degrees and put it up on the design wall. Now what?
I had a lot of fabrics with the right colors, so I pulled them all out and pinned them up on the design wall. Lots of options here!
(This is my typical process, followed by lots of editing.)
Perhaps this green-on-green piece would be a nice counter point. Not bad.
Next, 2 questions:
1 – Could the first fabric hold its own? Would it need some more contrast? It looked pretty awesome by itself.
2 – Regardless of the answer to the first question, should I alter the original fabric? Maybe move the chevrons around?
I decided that I should add some contrasting fabrics to the original one. Something dark and maybe green. Back to the green shapes. I liked inserting them between the chevrons.
But, maybe the chevrons shouldn’t all start at the top. What about this? I was missing the darker green. And maybe the far right chevrons are too far to the right? Lots more trial and error needed.
At this point I was folding fabrics and pinning them in place. No firm decisions or cutting yet. Soon, though! Check the next post for more progress.
Ellen Lindner
In my last post I showed you several fabrics that changed dramatically when washed and dried. Thankfully, that’s not the norm. I thought you’d like some assurance that things DO usually turn out as I want them. A few examples:
Fat black and brown lines on white (which stayed white, I’m happy to say.) I like this pattern and think I’ll do more similar pieces.
This piece had a rather anemic, mostly-white background, which I didn’t like. However, there were some small teal patterns in the background and I decided I wanted the bulk of the background to be a solid version of that. Hooray for color matching!
This nearly solid red-orange requires a lot of restraint! With all the colors and tools at my disposal, it’s REALLY tempting to add more pattern and color! But, I occasionally manage to create such fabrics. Thank goodness, because they’re very much needed.
What kind of dyeing successes (or challenges) have you encountered?
Ellen Lindner
For me, the hardest thing about dyeing fabric is predicting the final color. I think maybe I need a crystal ball!
Case in point: I spent a lot of time getting this fabric just the way I wanted it. This is what it looked like wet. I was concerned that the delicate tone-on-tone area in the lower right might not show up, but was otherwise confident about the outcome.
However, this is what I ended up, once washed and dried.
As expected, I lost the detail of that one corner, but where did the MINT green come from? Not satisfied with this result, I retreated the fabric and tried again. Here’s the reworked version, wet. As you can see, I kicked up the background colors quite a bit.
And this is the final version. Which I like a lot.
I’ve gone to the trouble to make a TON of swatches, just so I could avoid this problem. However, I’m not measuring and weighing dyes, just trying to match proportions. It looks like I might need to be more exacting.
And here’s another one that gave me trouble. Wet:
Washed and dried:
Ugh! What ugly colors! So, I tried again. Reworked and wet:
That looked pretty colorful, but it ended up just the way I wanted.
I guess my “take home” points are:
1 – Trust my swatches and try to “measure” more accurately.
2 – Don’t stress when it doesn’t come out to my liking, because…
3 – I’ve gotten pretty good at reworking the colors. (Yay for me! That’s a silver lining.)
Of course, not all the dyeing ends up off-color. I’ll show you some first-try successes in the next post.
Ellen Lindner
After considering radical changes to my quilt in-progress, I was excited to implement new ideas!
This was my initial trial and error placement. The twigs were part of the original version, along with the rust fabrics, but all the blue and black was new. I liked the arrangement and it changed very little.
But, it needed some high contrast, right? Maybe against that dark blue. Light twigs, maybe? I auditioned the idea by placing some little snips of fabric.
Yep, I liked it, so I PAINTED on two twigs. (Kinda scary, but I had tested my idea, so I felt pretty confident.) That really drew the eyed and I was very happy with it.
(I intended to use fabric paint, but it was all dried up. Therefore, I used regular craft acrylic paint. We’ll see how it holds up.)
I wanted the light areas to sort of creep across the piece, in a loose diagonal. Maybe I needed more light twigs to accomplish that? Again, I auditioned the idea with some little scraps. And maybe it was time to thoroughly examine proportions too. Should the black on the left be smaller?
Yes! Changes in both areas and I think they helped quite considerably. At this point I had also done most of the piecing.
Piecing complete, below. Considering the addition of some teal circles. I like repeating both the color and the shape.
I’m starting to get really happy with this piece. I’m SO glad I reworked it!
Any ideas for a name?
Ellen Lindner
I “blame” Pat Pauly. I was watching a video in which she was teaching about color. In it, she was switching fabrics on and off of her design wall, showing how different combinations might work. Or not. It was mesmerizing!
I looked across the top of my laptop toward my design wall and KNEW that my current quilt needed a big dose of what she was describing. At the end of the video, I jumped up, with Adrenalin surging, and started throwing fabrics onto my quilt in-progress.
Bam! The very first fabric added energy and excitement. Yes! This was the kind of thing that was needed!
Ooh, this next one had possibilities.
Hmm. Interesting (above.)
Of course, I knew the large circles would work, since I had just used them in the previous quilt. But, I didn’t want to mimic the first quilt, so I’d have to be careful if using this fabric. It does look good, though, doesn’t it?
More large circles, some navy, and white. Yes, possibilities.
Two blues?
Of course, I could add more than one fabric and that’s what I decided to do. To improve the quilt I knew I’d have to take apart some of the twiggy bits, but I was willing to do that.
Cuz it already looks more interesting, right?
Thanks, Pat!
Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’ve taken several classes with Pat and I’ve always gotten a lot out of them. I recommend her as a teacher and her hand dyed fabrics (which are for sale) are to “dye” for!
I enjoyed my last quilt so much that I decided to use the scraps from that one to start the next. With a little editing, I selected these fabrics as my starting point.
Of course, I didn’t want this new quilt to look like the previous one, so I sorta shied away from the large circles, much as I loved them. I had a twiggy fabric I thought might be interesting enough to be the focus point.
I didn’t like the dull gray brown parts, though, so I carefully cut the bulk of them away. The newly cut pieces are shown below. I really liked them and thought the high value contrast would be eye catching.
So, I started to arrange things on the design wall. I clustered the twiggy parts together and planned to insert very narrow, dark lines between them. I thought this would play up the dark line contrast of the twigs. So far, so good.
Hmm, I’m not sure I properly considered the scale of the twiggy parts. Could they carry all these other fabrics in a piece this size? Were they beginning to look skimpy? I could see that I needed something besides just squares of fabric for the perimeter pieces. What about curving skinny pieces? Could they play up the twigs idea? I auditioned the idea, below, and liked it.
Yes, the curvy lines helped. And I added some little bits of blue. Also, because the twigs were looking a little lost, I reduced the size of the whole thing.
I was getting close to piecing.
Or so I thought.
And then I watched a video.
Ellen Lindner
I loved making this quilt and I’m VERY happy with the results!
Raking Season
I dyed all the fabrics for this quilt, except for one. I love how they go together! (Note: I didn’t dye them specifically to go together. They’re ones I’ve dyed over a couple of years, but because I’m often drawn to the same colors, stencils, and techniques they ended up being a very cohesive group.)
Can you see that this quilt only has about 12 pieces? I was able to use large pieces due to the patterns in the fabrics. I’ve tried that before, but I think this was my most successful attempt.
Here’s a detail shot:
See larger images and more information about this quilt.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. If you want to see this quilt in-progress, check my posts from September 2022, or click the links below.
I was really happy with the way my latest brown quilt was coming together. It was time to add in some curves.
Yes, that was more interesting.
Now what? I knew that massing colors together is often effective. So maybe I could add some dark ones near the bottom circle piece.
Yes, something along these lines. As you can see, I worked in some more curves.
It looked like it now needed to get wider on the right.
Oh yes! I was really getting excited about this!
Along the way I decided the far left panel needed to be narrower, for two reasons: 1 – to make it a different width from the far right panel, 2 – to move the dark black/rust circles away from center. I auditioned the idea by covering the left edge with a piece of muslin.
But, did the top need cropping too? Again, I auditioned the idea with a strip of muslin. (Which is exactly why I own these strips of muslin.)
With a little tweaking and sewing the top was completed.
I am LOVING it!!! On to quilting.
Ellen Lindner