This’n a Bright One!

I’ve been busily working on a few new art quilts for my etsy shop. It has been depleted, which is a good thing , of course. I was happy to sell a few quilts to customers and six to a fiber art gallery. That is the point in having a shop. But my etsy shop looked so empty, I had to kick it into high gear. So I’ve made several lately and working on some others. Here is one I finished recently and listed. I always use Setacolors to paint/dye my silk backdrop and whatever else I ‘m going to use for that matter. Here’s a picture which shows a bit of the background colors, that I really loved. After quilting I was not real pleased that I had covered the whole background up, my beautiful painted silk. But I liked the crazy bright thread play, you can’t have it both ways.

Fire and Ice art quilt. Hand painted silk art quilt with lively thread play.

The quilting was lively you might say and I used some very intense watercolor pencils to add more color. This is one brightly colored quilt. Here are a few shots of the finished quilt. I’m warning you, if your eyes can’t stand bright light, don’t look at it without sunglasses. That’s my disclaimer.

Here’s my new art quilt after the quilting is done.

details of my-thread work and quilting

A closer look at the thread play

Impressionist art quilt

I painted this silk fabric a a month or so ago . I liked it, but how to turn this fabric into an art quilt? As usual, I needed to run things around in my head for a while. What techniques to use? To applique or not applique? What style quilting to use? Lots of choices available, which ones to use.

I have found that using applique, a lot of thread painting, or dense quilting, tends to obscure the fabric design. Which in this case, I wanted to highlight.

I finally worked out the plan of action. Keep the focus on the painting itself, no fussiness to detract or obscure. I have found that the more I add to the fabric; applique, thread painting, dense quilting, the less the background is noticeable. It covers the design on the fabric. Since I’m dye/paint my own fabric, I often have this debate with myself going on.

What I liked about this fabric was it’s impressionist style, the way it resembled a watercolor.

.New piece of silk painted and ready for next step

I kept thread painting to a minimum, a little to add grass that faded off into the background, creating the “meadow”. With the quilting, although needed , keep wanted to keep it unobtrusive.

I finished it and posted on Etsy.

A nice thing happened. A rep for Pebeo Company, Setacolor contacted me. They need an art quilt which utilizes Setapaints for display at the Quiltcon show. They will have a booth and want a quilt to illustrate how Setapaints can be used in Art Quilting. This is the quilt that they want.

We’re still working out the details, but it is a done deal.. I am so excited that they asked me and it is such a good product that I genuinely love. The consistency is perfect for what I do, it is a permanent dye like paint, it can be diluted or thickened to suit the need. The selection of colors are great.

I generally paint my silk with a diluted form. I use Setapaint to create my silk “paintings”. For this quilt, I used watered down Setapaint, in a wet on wet technique, to create the impressionistic style.

I love how versatile they are..No they didn’t solicit any comments on my part, I am speaking from genuine appreciation for the product. So I’m jived!

SOLD