Sunday, January 31, 2010

Technique of the Week #5 - Wholecloth Painted Surface

Project Hours: About 4 hours
Design and materials: 1 hour
Execution: 3 hours

The idea for this week's quilt came from an episode of Quilting Arts, Season 4. After watching Sue Kelly show how you could paint over a quilted surface with oil paintsticks, I decided on a faster approach with a "dry brushing" technique of my own.  Paintsticks take 3-5 days to dry and cure before they can be heat set.  Ths is done with fabric paints and cured in 1 hour.
The Octopus was freedhand drawn with a chalk fabric gel pen, and then quilted over in Blue thread to match the background.  I chose dense quilting and a couple of bubbles to add interest to the background.
Once the piece was quilted, I ironed it from the back so the front would have as much heighth as it was going to get.  Using a piece of cardboard as a pallate, I daubed on some paint and got my paintbrush wet.  Here is the "dry brushing" part, where you get a lot of the paint OFF of the brush and glide it over the "hills" of the quilting, leaving the "valleys" paint free. It takes a lot of passes witht he dry brush to get the amount of paint to show up.  This was a lot of fun!

3 comments:

CP said...

Beautiful, I love the "squigglies" all over!

Willow River Piecemakers said...

Really cool! I am a member of a quilt guild in New Richmond WI - www.willowriverpiecemakers.com May I post a link to your blog to share with our members? Most are traditional quilters, but your blog could get some inspiration started! Let me know, thanks for taking the time to do this each week!

Cheryl said...

Sure you can, Maxi! Thanks!