layers

It looks like I am neglecting my blog, but there are sometimes periods in which I do not have much to show. Showing a picture in which I am auditioning fabric for a project is a bit boring :-). Anyway for EB's masterclass this month the theme is layers. I tried different sketches, but fell back on to my favorite circles. To keep it consistent to all my other circle quilts, this one will be 12"x24" when it is finished. At the moment my layout looks like this:

The circles are a combination of hand dyed and commercial fabric. Background is a charcoal hand dyed fabric.

Another layout was this:

I printed the photo and drew the circles using a sharpie. EB's comment was that it looked like an armadillo :-)). If I make it like this, this name will be stuck to it forever.

Ugly duckling 2

Here is another ugly ducling. I don't know anymore how I dyed this piece of fabric, but it did not turn out great:

After I sodasoaked it, I crunched it and placed it in this jar, it is in the middle. I placed ice cubes on it and a couple of teaspoons of rosebud procion dye powder.

This is how it came out. The colors are wonderful now, don't you think?

Although it had greatly improved, I wanted to make it even better. With loofah slices as stamp I started stamping using burgundy Lumiere textile paint.

And a second layer using a bigger slice of loofah and gold nugget metallic Bella paint with this as result:

 

Isn't it gorgeous?

Ugly duckling 1

When you dye your own fabric - even as an experienced dyer - this does not automatically means that you love everything you create. Some pieces of fabric start their life as ugly ducklings, but with some help we can turn them into pretty swans. In the coming 3 blog posts I am going to show you what I did with some of them.
Here is a picture of how the fabric was originally, a clamped shibori:

I accordeon folded it - sorry no picture - and placed it on top of the other 2 pieces of fabric in this jar, added ice cubes and burnt orange procion dye powder.

The color of the fabric improved, but it still needed more. I used a strip of corrugated cardboard as a stamp and two colors of Pebeo Setacolor transparent: fuchsia and raw sienna.

After the stamping the fabric looked like this:

Much better than how it was, don't you agree? In two days I am going to show you another transformation.