Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Painted art quilts

I have a bunch of ice dyed fabrics, but was kind of stumped what to do with them.  I thought I'd make some quilts (roughly 16"x 20") and brayer paint on them.  Could be a tragedy, or could be cool, right?

Here is my first one, I really hate this Jade Green color. I do not free motion quilt very often, and I can tell how rusty I am, on these jaggedy looking swirls.  I drew one line of the swirls before I started quilting (not that it helped), but I didn't have much of a plan other than that.

I did measure these circles vertically so they would go from big to small (I drew lines with spacing at about 1 3/4" at one end and 1" at the other), but did not draw the circles ahead of time, or the horizontal spacing.

Here is my work station. I just brayered the paint on. I did not clean the brayer between colors. This took a lot of paint. The amount shown in this picture is laughable, it would probably only cover 2" x 2".

It looks pretty cool.

Here are the swirls. I really like it and think my swirls look better painted, for some reason. When I started, I thought I'd make them white with a hint of color, but I really liked the mix of colors. I may add more paint, and/or hand stitching.

Here are the circles. I do like the mix of colors, but find the pattern kind of boring.  I am thinking of making a much smaller art quilt and mounting it in the middle, leaving about a  4" border all around.

I really like the look of these, but I am somewhat sad that more of the ice dyeing isn't visible. I thought more of it would show adjacent to the stitched lines.

I already have two more quilts made, but think I will try another technique with them, maybe break out the Shiva paint sticks for those.

What do you think?  Do you think the swirly one needs a bit more work?

1 comment:

  1. I like the way they turned out! I can understand wanting to see some of what you've covered up. You might try adding glaze and thin your paint a little. You can also wipe some away with a paper towel or soft cloth. You could try combing thru it to add texture and expose the fabric more. :)

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