Field of Sunflowers

While the paint was still out, I painted the sunflower fat quarter quilt, so now it's also ready for binding and a sleeve! Although the discharge I tried in the background layer didn't seem to work as planned, maybe the paint to discharge paste was wrong, who knows, but it will require more testing to find out.  At least the background still worked for the sunflowers, and I'm happy with the way it came out!

This is the original fabric sandwich that was quilted:

The paint changed it to look like this:

It's fun to experiment with little projects like these, so I'm planning to do more in the future!

Daisies in Vases

Last night I had some fun with paint!  Using my limited palette of Jacquard fabric paints that came in little squeeze bottles, I mixed opaques, pearls and the metallic Lumieres to add more color to my little fat quarter, painted floral quilts.  I think the only thing left to do is bind and add a sleeve, and am considering an invisible binding, like I did on Janet's Influence, so the binding doesn't take away from the daisies and vases.

It started with a fat quarter sized fabric sandwich to be used to demonstrate free motion quilting on during our local shop hop.  As there were long breaks between groups of hoppers, I decided to have some fun and see what could be done with supplies on hand.  I used chalk to trace around my drink bottle, for the outer size for the daisies.  Once those were quilted, I decided they would be in funky vases and sketched funky outlines for the vases, stems and leaves.  All the sketched areas were filled in with free motion quilting and then the background, which ended up looking like this:

Up close, showing the real fabric color:

I wanted more color in the background, so this was painted with Jacquard's Dye-na-flow fabric paints, which flow more like a dye.  Now I liked the background color and it was ready to paint the daisies and vases, and the light was right, so I was able to get a better picture that showed the quilting off .  [I wish I could get the light to be like this for all my pictures:-)]

Painted Floral Quilts

These two little quilts were begun when I was at Quiltworks NW, demonstrating the Grip 'n Stitch disks, as I wanted to show the shop hoppers a more interesting quilting than just the little doodling, that just showed how to use the disks.  First I used chalk to draw circles around my drink bottle, scattering them across my sample, fat quarter, quilt sandwiches.  Once the flower centers were filled with quilting, petals were added, and then I chalked the stems and leaf placement.  I didn't stop until the whole quilt sandwich was covered with quilting!

For the second fat quarter quilt, flower heads were quilted in the circles, and then I decided they would be placed in vases, so I added a few more chalk lines.  Switching between chalking a few outlines and quilting, I worked until there was no more room for quilting! 

 Of course, the next step is going to be painting in the quilted designs, although I'm thinking I might like to try a wash of color to make the background more interesting before starting on the flowers.