Sunday, April 20, 2014

Eagle Quilt

I took a class last weekend on surface design- using thickened dyes to paint on fabric. (Confusing to call it painting- because it is definitely dyeing, not painting...)

Anyhow- I "invented" (someone has probably done it before me) a technique to make a variegated


line. I took a squeeze bottle and stacked yellow and red, so it would squeeze out yellow, red, and shades of orange.  Then I drew a stippled  line all over a piece of fabric.
When I got home I had this idea to stipple all the white space. Following the curve of the line I stippled about 75% of the quilt, all but inside one big blog near the bottom. I thought it would look cool to pebble that- if you look closely you can see the change of texture.

This was my idea for a finished project, but it didn't look like anything.

So I thought I should overdye it.  I overdyed in a light orange dye bath.  Now you can see the white quilting lines better, but it still didn't look like anything.

I had the idea to make it into a sunset. I went through Kevin's animal photographs (I wanted a giraffe, but couldn't find just the right one) and found a gorgeous eagle sitting on branches, and went to work in photoshop tracing it as a silhoutte.

I used freezer paper to cut it out of fabric backed with fusible, and fused my eagle onto the quilt. It is just fused, not stitched, so super easy raw edge applique. My freezer paper didn't want to stay attached, so cutting the fine detail was a bit tough.

It still needs binding, but I am so happy that my sunset silhouette turned out nicely!

5 comments:

ratama said...

It looks GREAT! That's an absolut fantastic idea to "paint" FMQ-Designs. I think I'll try that too in future.

Anonymous said...

This is such a great idea. I wish I had thought of it.

Will said...

That looks really neat!! I love the idea of using a photo and turning it into a part of a quilt. The painted stitching really makes the silhouette pop.

Anonymous said...

I enjoy looking at just the variegated line (easily impressed!), but I also like the FMQ and the additional work to finish your picture. Nice description of how the project evolved!

grtlyblesd said...

Wow! I love the look of the dye on the fabric! I've dabbled with dye a little bit, but nothing this cool! :) I keep thinking I need to dye up another batch of playsilks for the little kids, because the ones I made for my big kids are in shreds from being loved so much.