Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Painted Batting



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!

Friday, December 7, 2007

Abstract African Fabric Postcards


More postcards--surprize! These are a set that I make for the Abstract Fabric Postcard swap that I hosted on my Latest Trends in Mixed Media group. I made my second set with African inspired fabrics and embellishments.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Doodling Designs Class






I am taking an online class at www.joggles.com called Doodling Designs with teacher Susan Sorrell. I am way behind on lessons, but these are some doodles and the project for the first lesson. I am not much of a "doodler", I feel like I am trying to hard to "draw" instead of just let the flow of the doodle come. Too much of a control freak probably! I am anxious to go through the next lessons, it just might take me some time. Stay tuned....