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!