hand painted fabric – Page 10

Jubilee Quilters Show

Posted on June 22, 2019 by Laura Kate

Yesterday I attended a show hosted by our local quilt group. To say it was inspirational is an understatement. Who knew that in our little county of 50,000 residents there were so many superb fiber artists? Because the organizers permitted photography, I took a number of images. It was hard to narrow it down to favorites, but I am pleased to share the following:

Hexagon shapes
Created in technique called “Stack and Whack”

**Technically superb. How did the maker create all those perfectly round circles?**

**Created using a jellyroll group of fabrics. Name of quilt is “Ocean Deep.”**

**My favorite wall hanging quilt. The giraffe is created with dozens of flower shapes sewn atop one another. The birds and vines are fussy cut applique.**

**My favorite large quilt. It is a log cabin style, using batik fabrics.**

**I chose this one because the maker used hand-dyed fabrics for her squares.**

I admired the quilt below for its irregular and artfully placed strips, as well as for the cute applique ladybugs. The maker created it while recovering from a lung transplant. She finished the squares before passing away in 2008. Her grandmother sewed the top together.

I hope you enjoyed these quilts, and found them as inspiring as I did.

colorwork, painting

Colorwashed Landscape

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Laura Kate

We are busy day today, getting ready for hosting company. So instead of working up a new fiber object, I thought I would share this colorwashed piece of fabric which I made a few months ago. How it came to be is somewhat interesting, at least to me.

I started with a square of white cotton poplin. Using slightly wavy strokes and starting at the top, I applied blue, purple, red and green. Before the fabric dried, I used the “scrunch” technique – crumpling the fabric in various places. This causes the paint to run and dry unevenly, resulting in the dark creases you see above. Immediately, I thought it looked like a view of the Rocky Mountains. Dark brown and black appeared in the creases where the red paint met the purple and green. This reminded me of the mountains in recovery from a forest fire. To enhance the effect, I printed on the fabric in brown and green with blocks cut in jagged shapes, to represent the tree trunks, both living and dead. I painted snow on the mountains. Then I used fabric markers to delineate the sky and a field of pink blooming fireweed.

This landscape feels to me as if it appeared by magic.

colorwork, drawing, hand embroidery, sewing

Inspired by O’Keefe

Posted on June 4, 2019 by Laura Kate

My fiber efforts have been rather uninspired over the last two days, so no new posts. Then I picked up this book written by Georgia O’Keefe. It is an autobiography told in her own words and in beautifully reproduced images of her paintings. It got my creative thoughts moving again.

While she spent most of her life living in and painting the American Southwest, in the early stages of her career O’Keefe was best known for her large-scale paintings of flowers. Here is what she has to say about these works:

Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what the flower is to me but I’ll paint is big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.
Exhibition catalog, An American Place, 1939

So I decided to create a fiber flower, because I want to look closely at a flower. I chose to make a Moonflower, partly because of its star-like shape, and partly because I don’t see them growing around here. When I lived in Texas, I grew some moonflowers. It was way too hot to enjoy the garden during the day. Instead I sat outside at dusk, when I could watch the moonflowers swirl open.

Here is a pencil sketch I made of my moonflower:

I plan to use white poplin for the flower, with fabric paint on the shaded areas and embroidery on the bright areas. Here are some green fabrics I have chosen for the background and the flower shape I will cut from the white poplin.

The next steps are to piece together and sew the background.

**Background with paper template showing flower placement**

Tomorrow I paint.

colorwork, quilting

Lemons to Lemonade: Tales for fiber artists

Posted on June 1, 2019June 2, 2019 by Laura Kate

Once upon a time, there was a sad fiber artist. Alas! She had spoiled her hand-painted fabric by her own foolish actions. But she didn’t give up hope. Soon her mistakes were transformed into a pretty little quilt block through the magic of cutting them into small pieces and sewing them log-cabin style to some batting.

Today’s lesson is to keep everything. You never know. You could use all the ugly ducklings to make a beautiful swan.

colorwork, hand embroidery, sewing

Haiku illustrated

Posted on May 22, 2019 by Laura Kate

So here is what has happened since you last checked in with the haiku project. I have transferred the image of the jaguar to fabric.

Using Jacquard Textile paint, I added the features and spots to this beast.

Next I hand embroidered the details, including eyes, ears, mouth, paws and whiskers.

Here are the fabrics I chose, in the general layout I wanted.

The next step was to embroider the haiku onto the dark green rectangle. It was important to me to replicate Henry’s handwriting as well as I could. I enlarged the original on the printer. Using chalked paper, I traced over the letters to mark them on the fabric. Then I embroidered the letters in white floss.

Finally I appliqued all of the pieces to the background fabric, machine-stitched around the raw edges, and embroidered the last few white whiskers on the cat. Here is the piece in its current state:

And here is a final close-up of the jaguar.

My original goal for this piece was to illustrate Henry’s poem, and to practice embroidering hand writing onto fabric. At the outset, I never expected to paint the fabric so much. But I’m glad I did it. I learned more about how to apply paint to fabric. And I ended up with a colorful and meaningful piece of fabric art.