I have been experimenting with painting quilt batting. It is an idea that I have been tossing around after painting on dryer sheets and paper towels, and the recent article in Quilting Arts Magazine gave me the push I needed to start. I am a longarm quilter and I have oodles of batting scraps laying around that I cannot bear to throw away, and I have been using it to make fabric postcards, but have not made a dent it them!
These two experiments use diluted acrylic craft paint, that I slopped on with a foam brush. The orange set are less diluted than the greenish set. The wider pieces are Warm and Natural, and the skinnier pieces are Quilter's Dream Select Cotton. The QD paints more uniformly, the scrim on the W&N seems to interfere with the absorbtion of the paint, and leaves a texture, though I'm sure that feature could be used to an advantage. In this cold weather, they are taking a LONG time to dry, but are very quick to paint.
I am planning on incorporating them into my art quilts. The nice thing about batting is that it doesn't fray, it has dimension and body, and would create a lovely texture as a top element, and is easy to hand stitch through as well as machine stitch. Try it and show me what you've done!
