The Final Layer of Paint!

I'm finally happy with the results of painting experiment. I would do this again, but I would skip the  pounding and go straight to the painting. I definitely prefer knowing that my fabric has paint on it. Just so you know, this method produces a fairly stiff fabric that feels a bit like paper, but you would still be able to stitch through it.

Keep in mind that that the beauty of the iridescent paint is very difficult to capture.

Fabric 1

front

back

Fabric 2

front

back

Fabric 3

front

back

Fabric 4

front

The back side of Fabric 4 stayed the same.

You can still see a hint of some of the underlying images but I covered them up pretty well. Right now they still have quite a few wrinkles. I'll let the paint set for a full two weeks, then give them a good steaming to remove the rest of the wrinkles. I'm planning to store these pieces rolled instead of folded.

Exhibit at Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center

Fibervision is having an exhibit at the Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center in Santa Barbara from May 28- June 22, 2014. The opening reception will be on Wednesday, June 4th from 5:30 - 7:30 pm. If you're in town, please stop in for a visit. See the flyer below for all the details.

Here's a couple of close up shots of the quilting on one of my new pieces. It showcases the same "skylight" fabric that is used in the piece on the flyer above. Photos were manipulated, then printed on fabric. I also have a third design in progress that uses the same fabric.

I used plastic circle templates to help me quilt five sets of gradated circles, then I stippled around the outside to flatten the background.

Once the CPAC exhibit opens, I'll show you the entire quilt.

More Pounded Fabric

Here are the final two pieces from the Pounded Fabric experiment. Sometimes the best lessons are learned from your failures. This experiment is one of those lessons!

Fabric 3

 This is a fat quarter that somebody else dyed as part of an exchange. Not my style.

Not much better after the Setacolor and Lumier layer.

Front side. Another layer of Neopaque and Lumier. You can still see the stamped designs.

Back side looks a lot better than the front.

Fabric 4

I'm responsible for this piece. It has layers of rubbings with paint sticks. It's pretty bad.

 A layer of Setacolor and Lumier help, but it's still ugly.

Front side after another pounding with Neopaque and Lumier.

 The back side of this piece is probably the most interesting of all.

I like the combination of Neopaque and Lumier paint, however, I don't like this pounding technique. If I were to do this again, I would paint the damp fabric, then scrunch it into a bag to dry. At least I would know beforehand that all the areas that needed paint received it.

I'm not quite ready to give up yet and will do one final coat to all the pieces using my technique. I want majority of the underlying designs to disappear. Before I do the final layer, I need to finish the quilting on a piece that will go on exhibit at the end of May. 

Pounded Fabric Experiment

I read a blog post about Pounded Fabric and decided to give it a try. Of course, I didn't follow all of their directions. Silly me . . . will I ever learn? Probably not.

If I had started with a solid color of fabric like they suggested and didn't use transparent paint for the first layer, I would probably be done already. But no, I had to use some really UGLY fabric that I've been saving for some odd reason. Usually, layering makes the fabric more interesting. At this point, I'm not convinced that I should have wasted my time.

There are a lot of step by step photos so I'll only show 2 pieces of fabric today.

Fabric 1

 Hand dyed fat quarter. Not sure who made this, but it's not my style.

Squished fabric into a bag and added transparent Setacolor and Lumier paint. Still ugly

Squished fabric into a bag and added Neopaque and Lumier paint.

I still see the stamped design on the front side of fabric.

Back side of fabric . . . much better, but not great.

Fabric 2

All the steps are the same as Fabric 1.

I made this ugly fabric a long time ago using Soft Scrub with bleach.

 Setacolor made it worse.

 Front of fabric is still ugly.

Back of fabric is still ugly.

Am I completely wasting my time? Should I throw it away OR add one more layer?

Hand Dyed Fabric

The weather has been warm here which is perfect for dyeing. I like to dye outside on my patio. I get to play with color and enjoy nature. It doesn't get much better than that!

The top four pieces are fat quarters of Sateen.

The three pieces below are fat quarters of Broadcloth.

 If you love hand dyed fabric, take a look at my Etsy site to see what I have available.

Ready for Quilting

I tested my flower pin and foam basting creation on three 8 x 8" quilts and they worked well. I was pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy it was to pin the layers together.

So now I pin basted a small and medium sized piece and will quilt them to see if the pins actually stay pinned for the duration of quilting. That seems like an important feature, don't you think?

Here's the first piece that I'll quilt. It's around 16 x 20".

If the smaller piece goes well, this one will follow. It's around 35 x 40".

I have about 200 of the foam pieces cut, but only had 95 pins in my stash. If the pins hold well through the next test, I'll have to buy more pins. Even though the pile looks large, they are extremely lightweight, lighter than the safety pins I use now.

Carpinteria Flower Farms

Each year, the flower farms in Carpinteria open their doors to the public for one day. The article in the newspaper made it sound worthwhile, so I grabbed my camera and headed south.

The exterior of the greenhouses were unimpressive . . . grey, cheap plastic.

It was a different story when they opened the doors though; it was beautiful, colorful and alive.

We  visited 4 different nurseries, two orchids, one rose and one gerber daisy. All of them are completely computer controlled. If it gets too hot, the roof opens, too cold and the heaters come on, sensors control the water and any excess that drips out get recycled. It's pretty amazing.

And look at the flowers!

Look close at the top of the photo. See all the hand cutters hanging from the overhead pipe. Apparently, orchids get a disease that spreads through infected hand cutters. They learned (the hard way) that it's cheaper to buy thousands of hand-cutters than to loose an entire nursery of orchids.

Delicious Taco Slaw

Last night, I marinated chunks of Pork Loin in tequila, lime and plenty of spices. Today, I'll whip up a bowl of my delicious Taco Slaw while the pork cooks in my slow cooker.

Everyone loves this slaw and always asks me  for the recipe, so I thought I would share it with you too. It's super easy to make and it's delicious on tacos.

Taco Slaw
1 carrot, grated
1/2 head chopped green cabbage OR 1 bag of cabbage from TJ's
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro leaves
2-4 tablespoons chopped jalapeno, pickled okay
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/3 cup white vinegar
Add everything into a large bowl. Toss to combine.

Hope you enjoy it!

Pinmoor Knock-off for LESS

Have you seen the little rubber foam eraser shapes that are used with straight pins for pin basting? The product is called Pinmoor. I was intrigued because it looked really easy to remove the pins while you're quilting, but I wasn't prepared for the price. The average price (including tax and shipping) is $.43 per Pinmoor and they estimate that you need 100 Pinmoors to baste a baby quilt. Now that's pricey . . . and it doesn't include the flat flower pins either.

I started rummaging around through my stuff looking for different foamy products that could be used as a backing for the pins. I tried some foam insulation and ear plugs but they were too squishy and Styrofoam deteriorated a little each time I poked a hole in it. Then I came across some foam that is used to make rubber stamps and I was pretty sure that it work, but I needed a thick piece.  Unfortunately, all the pre-cut shapes at Michaels were thin, but then I found a 9 x 12" sheet that is 1/4" thick. I purchased one sheet for $.99 and headed home to experiment.

It's really easy to cut through the foam with your rotary cutter.  I cut a strip that was 1/2" wide, then cut 1/2" pieces from the strip. After cutting several of these. I found my flower head pins and stuck pins into the foam. Yay . . . it works great, but if you look really close to the picture above. The pin is almost inserted the full length of the 1/2" foam piece. I decided it would be a good idea to cut a few different sizes and try them out to see what I liked best.

You can see two of the pins and foam above. The piece on the left is a  1" square piece of foam. I only did a couple  this size and quickly decided that it blocks my view and I wouldn't like these all over my quilt.

Here is a close-up showing you how I bent the flat flower pin to make it easier to get through your quilt layers. I haven't actually quilted with the pins yet (I just finished inventing this 10 minutes ago), but it looks like it's going to work just fine. So far, the size that I like the best is 1/2 x 5/8" because there's a little extra wiggle room in the length. I'll get at least 100 foam pieces from one 9 x 12 sheet. Not bad! 

Let me know if you use this pin basting system and like it!

Sweet Ride!

I just got home from riding my new bike. Isn't she sweet? It's a Giant Escape. The fact that it's called "Giant" cracks me up because it's a size Small, but yet it's a Giant.

The gears on my old bike are tired. I have to say that it's much easier to ride a bike when the gears shift smoothly. I'm really enjoying the bike and have been riding it quite a bit.

I couldn't find my old set of pant wraps (for lack of a better name), so I made a new set from some ribbon and Velcro that I had in my stash.

You wrap them around your pants and secure the Velcro end. They save your pants from getting caught in the bike chain.

Quilting on the Sweet Sixteen

Fibervision has a exhibit at Cabrillo Pavilion Arts Center in Santa Barbara in June and I need to finish some new work for the show. Here are a couple of close-up photos of my second piece in the Looking Up series. It's pin basted and ready to be quilted on my Sweet Sixteen.

 The fabric on the left side was created using soy wax and paint. The purple fabric on the bottom is one of my Shibori dyed pieces.

The purplish fabric that is inside the orange stripes are photos of a skylight that I printed on cotton fabric. Hand-painted, hand-dyed, photos printed on fabric, batik and commercial fabric all combined in one piece. Quite the variety!

Here's a close-up showing the quilting in the area that has the hand-painted fabric.

Stay tuned . . . plenty more to come.

Bits and Pieces to Finished Top

I took a one day workshop with Sheila Frampton Cooper through my local guild. She was a good instructor and everyone had a fun day using basic curved piecing techniques. I've done this type of piecing before so the technique wasn't new to me, however, she did have a couple of twists that did make her technique a little different. I generally don't use solid(ish) fabric and was feeling a bit resistant but I wanted to try something different, so I stuck to her rules for the most part. I used a lot of my own solid(ish) hand-dyes, some solid commercial fabrics and one wipe cloth fabric. I'm sure you can guess which fabric that is.

Here are the bits and pieces that I had finished by the end of the one day workshop. At this point, it would have been pretty easy to put them away like I usually do after a workshop and never finish the piece. For some reason, that didn't happen. I kept plugging away, adding pieces until they fit together in a way that felt balanced.

Here's the finished top. It measures approximately 40"w x 35"h. It's not square and it's not going to be. Now I need to figure out how to quilt it. One of my friends suggested quilting each different colored fabric with a different stitch and matching thread. That sounds extremely time consuming and I don't think I want to do that. I'm thinking something simple like vertical lines.

What do you think? How would you quilt this?