"Bluebells"

"KISS" Keep it Simple Sweetie" this is a quiet easy piece for my husband for Christmas. It has none of the fancy stuff, glittery spiderwebs, dragonflies or crystals. It is made to fit the table top, on his side table in the living room. It is a 3 legged table with the cut corners, in the shape of the quilt top. He uses it for the remote, his book and to eat a lot of his meals on. He has an old place mat on it, that has seen better days. Maybe he can keep some of the food crumbs off of it, but I'm not holding my breath. It is a heavy blue linen/cotton? I used the Jacquard Decolourant Plus White and my hand cut stencils.

I used a bright blue rayon thread to outline and add veins to the leaves. Then I used a white chalk pencil to draw in the same type of leaves and flowers to the rest of the background. I quilted the background and got a nice flat surface for setting items on the table. I trimmed the edges and batting, and turned the backing fabric to the front, for an easy flat binding, that I then machine stitched.

It will be a surprise, as he doesn't play on the computer at all. I keep looking at the ratty old place mat and keep thinking about giving it to him NOW.

Discharge Botanical Stencils

I saw someone using discharge paste on one of the "Off the Wall Friday" posts, click here The Quilt Rat discharged a simple feather stencil. So I had an "A HA! moment." I would use discharge paste with all the botanical stencils I had just made. I got out a piece of black fabric approximately 18" wide, by the 40" length, and started placing the large assortment of stencils onto it. With the large variety I had made, I only used them once each. That meant I did not have to clean them after each use. I tried to vary the heights, overlap them a little, and filled in the bottom with extra leaves. I used "Jacquard Decolourant" discharge paste with a foam brush, to paint the stencils. Trying not to get my sleeve in the paste, I should have worked left to right, duh! I put each stencil into a flat aluminum pan with water, to soak, then washed them off when I was all done. The next day I did the rest of the fabric strip, I decided on a table runner, not just the 25" x 18" I had originally laid out.

After the paste was dry I used a steam iron to activate the paste. You can see how it goes from almost clear to gray to white. The steam helps get more bleaching action. But you don't know what underlying color the black is. I have seen black discharge to yellow, red, lavender, and green, they over dye odd colors. If you find one you like, go buy more!! Most of the fabric I've had has bleached to beige or rusty beige.

These two photos are after it has been ironed, it turns a white-gray, so you know it has bleached, but until you wash it out, you don't know quiet how much.

The whole strip, the top photo has been stenciled with product and ironed, the bottom has been washed and dried. You can see the color change after the washing, the final color is sort of a beige. It looked totally brown when it was wet, I thought I might not have ironed it long enough, but once dry it was fine. This is going to be so much fun to free motion quilt, rayon threads will give it some shine and glow. I'm going to call it "Midnight Moths." I can't decide if I want to add a border or not. What do you think? I've posted this on Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday, check out all the other wonderful quilt artists on her blog. Click on the button in the right hand column.

Jacquard Decolourant

Some of my finished pieces of discharged fabric need a little something extra, so I got out my Shiva paint sticks and added a copper metallic to the ginkgo leaves. I used the same small and large stencil that I had used to discharge, and added copper leaves all over the fabric. Now it needs to set a few days, and heat set with an iron, and then decided what I want to do with it.

I also added silver metallic paint stick to one of the pieces of fern fabric that I used the Declorourant Plus white on. Painting the ferns to overlap a little bit, added another dimension to the layers, and a ghostly silver/white. Is the picture clear enough to tell the difference between the tan discharge and the silver Shiva?

Several pieces of what I think are navy blue Kona Cotton fabric were floating around my table, so I did some more decolourant plus white, onto them. I used several different stencils, leaves, flowers, maple leaves and a smaller curly cue pattern. You can see in the one photo were one of the fabrics is only half coated with the decolourant. I've got them rinsing now, so I'll see if I got a good navy/white or if it discharged to tan.

Now to dream up another project to use the fabrics on. Any suggestions?

Stone Washed Leaves

The piece of discharge fabric with the large tropical leaf stencil was intriguing me, I thought it looked like stone washed blue jeans. I decided I wanted to quilt it wholecloth, and not cut it up. So I went through my Bali batiks, and some other fabrics until I found an assortment to go with the leaves. Kind of a gray, peachy, tan, and creamy, color blend.

While cutting strips up for a border, I decided I did not want a symmetrical square quilt, it was too much black in the center, and I was choosing light colors for the border, to match the discharged areas. The resulting border was added on the left and bottom, with strip sets of the batiks, and a narrower plain border on the top and right. Choosing the width of the plain border was a challenge, I even asked my husband's opinion. He is very good about constructive advice, and I often take it, but he accepts that I go my own way occasionally. So I have no problem asking him, when I can't make up my mind about a decision.

The quilt top went together quickly, and the next morning I started quilting on it with rayon thread. I choose 6 different colors of thread to quilt in the leaves, one for each shade of leaf, gold, lavender, cream, silver, charcoal, and rust. I don't know if it made any difference at all, it is not very noticeable. I used an outline/echo quilting pattern, and used the same in black for the background and border. I finished it in a solid black binding, with the backing and sleeve black also.

The three photos of the whole quilt are, the top only, and then after the quilting, and a closeup. I think it looks very crisp and modern, but it also has an Egyptian look to it, especially with the quilting in the background, which is hard to see in the photo. So I am very pleased with it, it is a beautifully shaded piece of fabric, and not cutting it up, really showcased the discharging.

Discharging Fun

Yea, Peggy came over and we got to play with several different types of discharging. I started with a spray bottle of 50% bleach over leaves placed on black fabric. No results, more spray, nothing happening, we worked with other products and kept patiently checking the bleach spray. Finally my husband brought out a new bottle of Clorox instead of the generic bleach we were using. Instant results, so check on the strength of any generic bleach you have, we watered it down and it was too weak. Lesson learned the hard way, we wasted an hour and a half waiting for the bleach to NOT work. In the mean time we played with Soft Scrub, with added bleach, and two generics from the Dollar Store, a scrub and a gel. We carefully sponged them over stencils, again nothing worked. The generic products are too weak, when we finally stirred in some Clorox, it finally started to change color. One of the things we had learned previously was that chlorine evaporates quickly, if you put Soft Scrub on a paper plate to work with it, it will loose strength the longer it sits out. So we had added bleach, unfortunately it was the generic. We finally got things going, about noon, and decided on a coffee and lunch break.

Since things were finally working we decided to keep going, because it was a nice cool day, and all the supplies were already outside. Peggy continued to work with the scrubs with added Clorox, the scrub gave some color/texture/thickness to the paste and you could see what you had painted onto the stencil. She redid some of the pieces she'd already stenciled, giving her a two tone appearance, a very bleached out white and a rusty area. With the bleach products, we also had a bucket of Anti-chlor from Dharma, which we soaked the fabric in for 15 minutes, and then rinsed in plain water. WORK OUTSIDE with bleach products, my picnic table and deck were perfect for this, but our fabric kept blowing away in the wind. We used clear flat marbles and rocks to hold everything down.

We both tried Jacquard's Decolourant, the regular and the Declourant Plus with white dye. After stenciling onto the fabric, the piece was left to dry, and then ironed to activate the process. It was hard to tell how much to iron, as the white paste still remained on the fabric, and the directions said the longer/hotter you iron the more it discharges. The fabric was then rinsed in plain water, and you could see the black dye wash out, it looked purple and we hoped the stencil would have a purple cast to it. But it rinsed out to a tan/white, you could see the brush strokes and the different areas where the iron was on longer. Also some of the iron vent holes appeared in the print, but we both liked the effect, so it wasn't a problem. Lesson learned, keep the iron moving.

We decided that our black fabric was probably "Country Classics" from Joann's Fabrics, I had bought a bolt on sale, but we also had some scraps, who knows what that was. The regular Decolourant left the fabric with the underlying dye color, and the Plus with white, left a white washed sheen to the areas that were discharged. I tried a piece of fabric with both types, and the effect was very nice together, subtle color changes added variety to the print. I used mostly fern, Gingko, and a large leaf stencil, Peggy had a bird on branch stencil, leaves, butterfly, and other bugs. The results were very different from the Clorox to the Decolourant. At the end of the day, I stenciled declorourant onto a dark pink 100% cotton T-shirt, after drying it ironed and rinsed out to a yellow under dye. It needs to be rinsed and then washed to see the final results. I'll add a picture later. I think I will add some Shiva oil sticks to the gingko fabric I printed, maybe the ferns as well. The large leaf print I am already working on, I'll post it the next time I blog. We had a great day, thankfully it was cool enough to really enjoy, a slow start, but we are happy with our final results. We learned to work out our "what ifs" trying to make everything work, trying different products, and techniques. It's great to work with a friend, I would have stopped half way through if I had been by myself, but setting aside the time to really try it, with a friend, was great fun.

Play Day at Vera's

6 Members of the Fyber Cafe, textile arts group, went to Vera's for a play day. We took several homemade gelatin plates and our acrylic paints. The young girl that I mentor was able to go, 'cause it was spring break, and I love having her along, she is so creative. We played all morning with the paints, masks, and foam stamps on the gelatin plates. Peggy worked in a series of lavender purple and yellow moons, with stamped dragonflies, Pat made a raven print and a red lily on a textured green background. Several people played with wood carved blocks from Indonesia to stamp their fabrics, and a new lady worked with a discharge process, to remove the color from black fabric. She used "Finish" dishwasher liquid for her discharge medium. I made several "Moon" prints also, as it leaves a big area to show through the bottom layer of paint, also a favorite was a bird on a branch stencil that we used as a mask. We had a brown bag lunch, but Vera had made a pineapple/rhubarb pie, oh delish!! After lunch the new lady, Landreth, showed us how to make 3-D flowers and bugs for decorative coffee sleeves. They were beautiful finished up in a cluster. She uses Golden Medium GAC400 as a sealant, as it bonds into the fibers of the fabric and is very stiff and permanent. After that we made a few more prints and cleaned up for the afternoon. We had an awesome time, and tried different techniques, which is a great way to spend a play day! I'm looking forward to see what everyone makes with their fabrics. Next up, a field trip on Friday to the Big Portland Sewing and Quilting Expo! Yeah!!

Twisty Pointy Bags

For Christmas presents I made some small drawstring bags. I found a pattern for a Japanese bag, where the first part is sewn as a windmill, and the sides swirl up on the bias, it results in points of fabric at the top. It recommended cutting off the points and sewing on loops for the drawstring. I said "no way!" the points are the best part. I had remembered seeing somewhere, a finishing technique where the points were folded over and a channel made for the cording. I finished my bag with this method and love the results. I showed the bag at our textile art group meeting and everyone loved it and wanted to make them at the next meeting. So I made a handout with directions and everyone brought fabric and a few sewing machines. My first bag was made with a faux-sashiko technique on indigo fabric. I used Jacquard De-colourant, in a small needle tip bottle, through a stencil I made small dashes to make a pattern to imitate the Japanese stitching technique. One of the strips did not bleach out very well, so I made an extra piece by printing small maple leaves onto the fabric with the de-colourant. I love this one the best, it is for me! I made several others for presents, some with four strips, some with narrower 8 strips, in a variety of prints.