Tag: Surface Design

But it looked so easy!!

I’m not sure about you, but I can easily get distracted by Facebook and YouTube Reels. In particular, I enjoy watching people buy old furniture and transform it into something amazing, and people doing outstanding watercolor paintings. Lately, I’ve also been impressed by people using a Gelli plate to create prints on paper and fabric.

AND IT LOOKED SO EASY……

So, Friday afternoon I decided to give it a try.

I purchased a Gelli plate last summer but had never tried using it, so out to the garage I went with all of my supplies in tow….

I had no idea of what type of paint to use but decided to start with some paints that I had purchased in China….

I did everything the way I had seen it on the Reels, and this is what I came away with….

I tried several more, but only got one decent print…..

Several more of them came out like this…..

I decided that it was probably too hot so I tried again the next morning….

….and even more disaster!!!

It only got worse as the session went on…..

….and I finally gave up and called it a day!!!

I don’t know if it was the fabric that I was using, the paint that I was using, or that I didn’t understand the technique, but something was DEFINITELY wrong!!

I need to do some research and learn how to do it properly next time!!

But, it was still fun to grab some fabric and play just a little bit!!

Have you tried this technique? Did it work???

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Freezer Paper to the Rescue

Don’t you hate it when you need to paint one little piece of fabric but you don’t want to have to put down plastic and get out all of the paint trays…. and the palettes….. and the brushes…. and everything else? 

Try this next time!!

Grab a piece of freezer paper and cover your table with it.

Because it has a waxy surface on the back, no liquids are going to travel through the paper to the table…..

You can even use the paper to mix your paint, meaning that you don’t have to clean a palette after you’re done…..

For most of my botanical painting, I prefer to use a sea sponge, and yes, I have a FAVORITE one!!

Just dip the sponge in the paint palette a few times on the paper…..

And then paint the fabric….

The best thing about this is when you were done, you scrunch it up…..

roll it all into a ball…..

…and throw it away!!

So next time, skip the plastic and head for the freezer paper 

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Let’s start stitching!!

We are coming to the end of the “Sadie, the Saddle-Billed Stork” project.

Today we will start the thread painting and quilting.

The first thing that I had to do was attach the “thread grass” to the background….

I had to be careful that I was covering all of the edges…..

If I needed a bit of extra grass, I used some of the offcuts that I had from making the grass….

Once they were stitched in place, you couldn’t tell that it had been patched.

At the top, I was careful to tuck the cheesecloth under the grass…..

Everything was now ready for Sadie to make her appearance….

I pinned her on and immediately started thinking about how I was going to thread-paint her…..

I realized that I was scared to start the thread painting and began by only doing simple things, like stitching around every one of the feathers and every section of her body. That was okay but wasn’t enough!!

I finally decided to go all in and spent the next several hours happily stitching…..

When I was happy with the stitching, I basted the quilt and started quilting.

Since I had laid down so much thread on the top, I decided to keep the quilting simple.

The meadow was quilted in a simple wavy line……

I loved the texture that it added to the piece.

I did change the quilting along the two “path-type” areas…..

The leaves had already been heavily thread painted so the quilting just outlined them further.

I added vertical squiggly lines in the background trees too.

It was a BLAST to quilt and I look forward to showing you the FINISHED quilt…..

Come back tomorrow!!!

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In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.

Now what??

Yesterday I showed you all of the cheesecloth that I had dyed, but now what was I going to do with it??

I started videoing this process, but after I spent about 10 minutes just staring at the area and not really doing anything, I decided that it might be a fairly BORING video……

I kept on picking up pieces of cheesecloth, laying them on top, and then saying…..”nope”!!

I had an “AHA” moment when I laid this piece over the painted fabric……

OKAY…..that can be my starting point!!

My first thought was to start with the tree trunks that were coming up from the meadow so I cut off a piece of brown/grey and laid it down…..

Then I added some more……

…being careful to wrinkle the cheesecloth up so that it wasn’t just a flat piece of fabric.

Okay….I was on a roll now!!

It didn’t take long to get all of my “tree trunks” in place.

Since some of the straight pins were getting in my way, I decided that it was time to permanently attach these tree trunks.

I once again used my “applique quilting foot” which does a wonderful job of keeping the edges in place as I stitch…..

I thought about the palm trees that I had seen when we were in this area and remembered that they had a rough texture to them, so I added a bit of filler stitching in as I went…..

When I placed Sadie over the top, I was thrilled with how it was looking…..

Now to add more!!

I looked at the picture and realized that there were more brown trunks on the right-hand side of the photo so started throwing even more cheesecloth at it…..

I had worked REALLY hard to get a super dark green cheesecloth, but when I added it to the piece, it was way TOO dark!!

I fixed it by over-painting it with some lighter green…..

…and eventually putting light cheesecloth on top of it…..

It didn’t take long to get all of the cheesecloth in place…..

And look at how much I had left over……

If you need dyed cheesecloth…..shoot me a message 😎😎 !!

We are nearing the end of this project, so be sure to come back tomorrow as I work thru the thread painting and quilting of this great quilt.

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In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.

Cheesecloth fun!!

I am enjoying working on “Sadie” but each step has provided a different set of issues.

Now that I had all of the meadow grass done…..

….it was time to tackle the trees/leaves at the very back of the photo.

Since the focal point of the photo was Sadie, it meant that the background was blurred out…..

….and I really wanted to accomplish this on the quilt as well.

BUT HOW???

I knew that fabric would be too stark and that painting would be too different from the intense thread of the rest of the background!!

While racking my brain, I hit upon the blog post I had written about making the “Botero Flower Garden” quilt….

In it, I talked about dyeing cheesecloth and using it as the background.

WOULD THAT WORK??

There was only one way to find out….. head to the garage and do some dyeing!!

I pulled out my box of “Set-A Color” Fabric Paints from Pebeo……

….and grabbed some supplies out of my “painting bin”…..

I pulled these colors for the greens…..

….and these browns and greys……

I had one piece of cheesecloth already on my shelf and found two other types in my local store. It was interesting to see the different textures and colors…..

I had a fun hour and dyed LOTS of pieces of cheesecloth.

I am NOT a person who carefully measures her dyes but rather I throw in what I think will work and go from there.

In each case, I put one of each type of cheesecloth into a bowl and poured in the paint……

I then added water to the bowl to give more liquid volume……..

….and proceeded to dip and squeeze until the cloth was completely covered in paint…..

I continued this process until I had a bunch of pieces in greens and browns…..

When they were dry, I headed back to my studio and carefully ironed each piece…..

Now that I had LOTS of cheesecloth to play with…..

…..the question was how to use them!!

Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you what I came up with!!!

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In this blog, I post stories about creativity, techniques, tools of the trade, and lots more about the wonderful art of quilting. If you are enjoying these posts, please subscribe to be notified of each new blog as it becomes available.