Updated Shibori Quilt

I decided to go ahead and add the 2 rows to the shibori  quilt I made for Elizabeth Barton's class at Quilt University. I like the way it came out. The longer I stare at it I find more visual patterns in it. It's given me more ideas for some shibori quilts. Just need to dye some more fabric!

We are back from Kara's graduation. It was nice. The weather was a little gray and chilly but we had a nice visit with Gary's family while we were there. Kara had fun getting together with all her friends before they all went in different directions. Now to just get through Alex's high school graduation in a month.

Shibori Quilt Top

Here's the top I made with the shibori fabrics I made in Elizabeth Barton's class. I'm thinking of adding another row at the top and bottom of this. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.

Tomorrow Gary and I are off to Houghton, NY for Kara's college graduation. Not looking forward to the 10 hour drive there and back. Kara flew out Sunday to be able to do some of the senior activities that are going on this week and spend some more time with her friends before they head off in different directions.

More Fabrics from Elizabeth's Class

The second lesson we did was color dyeing. I tried my hand at making browns from blue, red and yellow. I saw some pieces dyed from these colors in one of my dyeing books and liked the colors.

In lesson 3, we moved onto shibori. 

The next 2 pieces were wrapped diagonally on a pvc pipe and scrunched down.

This piece reminds me of tree branches.

This was the blue/green  piece above, I over-dyed it with turquoise. I like the way this came out. 

This piece was wrapped on a bigger pvc pipe and wrapped with string as I scrunched it. I dyed it with fuschia and green. The green was made from basic blue and sun yellow.  I love the way this came out. I also did a run of fabric using these colors. Just waiting to get them rinsed out, washed and dried.

Now to figure out how I am actually going to use these!

Class with Elizabeth Barton

I'm taking a class on Quilt University with Elizabeth Barton. It's called Dyeing to Quilt. It is sad that Quilt University will be closing down at the end of the year. With Carol Millers death, there is no one to run it so this will be it's last year. I'm glad I had signed up for this class. 

Some of the basic dyeing stuff I'm already familiar with. In the first lesson, we did a gray gradation to study value. I've never really done a value study and never made a quilt with blacks and grays. 

I decided to use this drawing that I made years ago after a class with Rosalie Dace called "Up Close and Personal". It was part of a word done in calligraphy. I really was drawn to the curves in it and the play of positive and negative space.  Even though I liked it a lot, I never did anything with it till now. I'd always turn to it  in my idea notebook but didn't really know what I wanted to do. For Elizabeth's class, I did for different value drawings. This is just one of them.

This is what the quilt ended up looking like.  I decided to go with an off center spiral for the quilting to echo the curves in the design.  I would like to keep going with this idea and use it for more value studies and also color studies.

I'm also excited that the classes for next years North Country Studio Workshops is up on  their site. I'm looking at the Quilting class with Cynthia Corbin and the Surface Design class with Jason Pollen. Both would take me out of my comfort zone and push me. Because Jason's class isn't just a "quilting" class, I would have to push myself more and be more out of my comfort zone. I've never really taken a class that wasn't a quilt class. Last years class at NCSW was the first class I'd ever taken that wasn't at a quilt show or workshop. I really enjoyed seeing all the other art that was being done. Elin Noble is teaching the Fiber class there but I really don't need to learn a new technique. It's a natural dyeing class and at this point in my life,  I don't need to learn something where I need to buy more stuff to work with.
Just need to decide which class I want to put as my first choice and which as my second.

Didn't Work

I found out that using marbo gum from Pro-Chem doesn't work with Jo Fitsell's marbling technique. When the fabric dried, the marbo gum made a plastic like coating that didn't wash out. I even tried washing it in the washing machine and it still didn't come out. It's flaking off now but the paint is coming off with it. I will be sticking with the methyl cel for this technique. Eventually I should be able to get this off and reuse the fabric or marble on the other side.  I'm glad I didn't try marbo gum first or I might not have tried again with the methyl cel.

                                                     You can see how shiny the coating is.

Another Day of Marbling

Here are some more marbling pictures. These are ones that I've marbled a second time. I really need to figure out how I'm going to use these. They are so different from what I usually use that it has got me a little bit stuck but they are so fun to make that I keep making more and keep asking what if I try this?? I have more fabric drying to marble later today. I pulled some more commercial fabrics to try and some of my painted hand painted ones.

I was looking at this one oriented vertically and thought it looked like a backbone, my friend, Debbie said a snakeskin.

These are all about 10"x13". The size of a large turkey roasting pan. I'd love to find or make something that is bigger so I can try marbling some bigger pieces.

Marbling - Day 4

Here are pictures of the marbling I did yesterday. It's interesting how the same color looks different when on a different background color. This first one was done on a piece of green silk. The one with a gray background fabric is also a silk.

These next two were made by splattering the paint on to the methyl cel. The first one was a commercial fabric. I like the way the changes in the background fabric show through the marbling. 

This one was done on a hand-dyed background.

I used the circle stencil for this one. Just wanted to see what it would look like without any other marbling underneath.