Teaching Local

Starting in March, I'll be teaching at Quiltworks Northwest in Bellevue, WA!   Some of the classes are designs from my book or pattern line, but others are brand new, like my floral vest, embellished bag, and stamp carving for quilters.  To see more and sign up for my classes go to their website HERE.

Floral Vest:

Sunflower Garden:

Stamp Carving for Quilters:

Crepe-Paper Poppies:

Beaded Bags:

Summer Blooms:

Field of Sunflowers

While the paint was still out, I painted the sunflower fat quarter quilt, so now it's also ready for binding and a sleeve! Although the discharge I tried in the background layer didn't seem to work as planned, maybe the paint to discharge paste was wrong, who knows, but it will require more testing to find out.  At least the background still worked for the sunflowers, and I'm happy with the way it came out!

This is the original fabric sandwich that was quilted:

The paint changed it to look like this:

It's fun to experiment with little projects like these, so I'm planning to do more in the future!

Daisies in Vases

Last night I had some fun with paint!  Using my limited palette of Jacquard fabric paints that came in little squeeze bottles, I mixed opaques, pearls and the metallic Lumieres to add more color to my little fat quarter, painted floral quilts.  I think the only thing left to do is bind and add a sleeve, and am considering an invisible binding, like I did on Janet's Influence, so the binding doesn't take away from the daisies and vases.

It started with a fat quarter sized fabric sandwich to be used to demonstrate free motion quilting on during our local shop hop.  As there were long breaks between groups of hoppers, I decided to have some fun and see what could be done with supplies on hand.  I used chalk to trace around my drink bottle, for the outer size for the daisies.  Once those were quilted, I decided they would be in funky vases and sketched funky outlines for the vases, stems and leaves.  All the sketched areas were filled in with free motion quilting and then the background, which ended up looking like this:

Up close, showing the real fabric color:

I wanted more color in the background, so this was painted with Jacquard's Dye-na-flow fabric paints, which flow more like a dye.  Now I liked the background color and it was ready to paint the daisies and vases, and the light was right, so I was able to get a better picture that showed the quilting off .  [I wish I could get the light to be like this for all my pictures:-)]

Painted Floral Quilts

These two little quilts were begun when I was at Quiltworks NW, demonstrating the Grip 'n Stitch disks, as I wanted to show the shop hoppers a more interesting quilting than just the little doodling, that just showed how to use the disks.  First I used chalk to draw circles around my drink bottle, scattering them across my sample, fat quarter, quilt sandwiches.  Once the flower centers were filled with quilting, petals were added, and then I chalked the stems and leaf placement.  I didn't stop until the whole quilt sandwich was covered with quilting!

For the second fat quarter quilt, flower heads were quilted in the circles, and then I decided they would be placed in vases, so I added a few more chalk lines.  Switching between chalking a few outlines and quilting, I worked until there was no more room for quilting! 

 Of course, the next step is going to be painting in the quilted designs, although I'm thinking I might like to try a wash of color to make the background more interesting before starting on the flowers.

Gelatin print pictures

I promised more pictures....

This first group has some of my favorites. For some, stamps were impressed in the paint covered gelatin, for others tools were dragged in, or items such as punchinella (sequin waste) were laid on top before printing, fork tines dipped in paint, and some have a combination.



One of the most difficult things was having enough paint on the gelatin, without using too much, although second prints from those over-inked prints were very interesting. Below are two prints with the left being the first print, and the right being the second print. Each have interesting possibilities for further enhancement.



Ellen printed these next two, so I'm not sure if she added more paint to the first one after printing the second, but I think she used leaves as a resist in the second, and then used them to print with (there may have already been a ghost image on the fabric). They are my favorite prints of hers, and I love the leaf detail in the first one.

I think this was my first print, and I found it difficult to control the stamps when trying to press it into the paint on the gelatin, because it was very slippery.

Gelatin Printing and stamping

Last week, my friend Ellen and I got together to try gelatin printing. I've been reading and thinking about this for quite a while, but hadn't tried it yet, and I had recently purchased another book that included the technique, it was time!

I pulled out my trays of fabric paint, brayers, stamps, picked some leaves from the garden and covered the table with a plastic tablecloth to protect it.We turned out the gelatin onto foil, so we'd be able to lift and move it if we wanted to.


At first, we tried to use larger pieces of fabric, but ended up tearing it into pieces that were just a bit larger than the gelatin, and found it much easier to work with. We poured paint onto the gelatin an dused brayers to spread it out, and sometimes forks worked even better to spread several colors without overblending the colors. We used forks, paint scrapers, and anything we could think of, including caps from spray bottles. Whenever we used stamps to create designs in the paint, we stamped the ink off onto another piece of fabric, or in my case, my painting apron.

The time flew by, and we ended up with fabric spread out to dry on two racks. Here's the rack that had most of our fabrics - mine are mostly in the front half, and Ellen's in the back half. I've taken some close-ups of some of Ellen's fabrics, and once I take some of mine, I'll post my favorites.



Although we only needed one gelatin plate each, both of us mixed up more than one pan of gelatin, because we didn't think they would hold up nearly as long as they did, and hopefully we'll use them to print more fabirc before they dry out and become unusable.

Fabric Painting / Sun Printing

Yesterday was a very busy, but very fun day! A couple of friends came over to do some fabric painting and sun printing on my driveway, but since it was their first visit to my house, we spent more time than we should touring the house and studio, so painted less fabric than we could have. Originally, I had hoped to take pictures while we worked, but the day went by so fast no pictures were taken. Fortunately I still have the fabrics that I painted, so here they are:


I love the depth of color and sunprints on this one.



The ferns printed better on this one, but it doesn't have as much color going on as the first.


And this one is almost flourescent when you see it in person, but beautiful!

For something different, the burnt orange is just paint and a couple different types of salt.

And this pink one printed the texture in the drop cloth, driveway, and a few wrinkles, but coordinates with one of the others. Not bad for just wanting to use up leftover paint!