Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Progress of members' challenge quilts

Here are the photos of other members' challenge quilts at our May 21st meeting:

Chris finished piecing her quilt top, and began hand-appliqueing the leaves.
It will be gorgeous when the rest of the leaves are applied!
Erika's quilt on the design wall.
 Apologies for the blurriness of these photos.  We were fast losing sunlight and trying to compensate by turning on all the lamps and overhead lights . . .
Top of Erika's quilt.  The row of single squares shows
all 12 surface-designed fabric swatches from our exchange.
Bottom of Erika's quilt.
Maureen's music-inspired piece also showcases
our 12 fabric swatches (center, bottom).
We didn't get to see everyone's work-in-progress, as some members were traveling and others' quilts were still at their homes, pinned to design boards or in too many pieces to transport to the meeting.  As usual, I seem to have made the least progress!  I can never seem to get cookin' until a deadline is looming too close for comfort.  And even then, I'm still changing my mind . . .
My painted and thread-painted bubble trees, where
the resist failed to hold back the paint!
Technique:   Working with a resist* in a small plastic bottle with a thin metal applicator tip, I outlined the areas that would become tree trunks, branches, the half-circle shaped "bubble," as well as the edge of the grass line.  (* I used Presist, a water-soluble resist that works on cotton fabrics.)  Once the resist was thoroughly dry,  I sprayed a light mist of water on the grassy area before painting it with diluted Setacolor paint, knowing that would help the paint blend.  I should have remembered to suspend the fabric onto stretcher bars (as in silk painting), and because I didn't, the wet fabric clung to my plastic-covered painting surface and the green paint migrated above the resist lines of the grass.  Elsewhere, I painted on dry areas and the paint stayed within the lines (except for a bit on the far left).  Once the paint was dry and heat-set, I rinsed out the Presist, then began thread-painting, a technique I love.
This was a fun experiment, though not 100% successful.    I overdid it on the smallest tree on the right. Earlier, when applying the Presist there, I had problems getting it to flow in a  smooth, thin line.  The resulting blobs meant that after rinsing out the Presist, the white areas to be thread-painted were much wider than in the other two trees.
And after this experiment, I realized that the scale of the trees was all wrong.  So it's back to the drawing board.

2 comments:

  1. I love the vibrant colors that everyone is using!

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    1. Dayna, Thanks for your comments; they're ALWAYS welcome! We have to give a nod to Kathy Deggendorfer, of Sisters, who designed this year's quilt show poster, since our color choices were based on her palette. But everyone in our group did a great job this year in creating their own surface-designed fabric based on Kathy's palette. We used more challenging techniques than last year, including fabric marbling, dyeing (several types, including shibori), hand-painting, stamping, stenciling, and using DeColourant, a product that both discharges AND replaces color.

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