Fiber Junkies

Well, I'm a little late in reporting on our recent Fiber Junkies meeting last week, getting ready to go to Ireland and lots to do. This month, we explored painting on fabric that was already quilted. Denny, who saves everything, has lots of end pieces from completed quilts. 

The pieces were interesting to work with. We also had whole cloth quilted samples that Kate brought for us. She's constantly experimenting with quilting designs and these were her gorgeous discards.

After working with both styles - wholecloth and strips, I think I preferred the strips as each fabric added a different element to the background.

So how did we do it  ?....using rollers, brayers, sponge rollers and brushes, we applied paint to the surface. We used house paint - the many samples you buy at paint departments to test on a wall before using. I finally found a use for them. They seemed to work the best. The fabric needed to be sealed before applying more expensive paint on top that might get lost by seeping into the unsealed fabric. This paint worked like a charm. You can already see the wonderful transition.

Another thing we used was the samples from decorator books. So many of the fabrics are prequilted into lovely designs like the one above and below.

The paint highlights the design so well catching the tops of fabric and leaving the recessed stitched area untouched by paint - most effective.

Here are some of the samples, although in my excitement I failed to note which one belonged to who, all were fun and interesting.

Like I mentioned before, I really liked the multi fabric strips...

when done, such a great palette and also very busy.

This is one of my favorites although I don't know who it went home with. Now to figure out what to do on top, something simple - maybe a silkscreen or more details in paint - maybe in metallics.

This was an old piece of canvas I had painted and mucked up a bit - a while back. I just added a bit of circles to it and some blue paint. It's very busy but I like it and hope I can find a use for it.
Til next time...