Thursday, December 19, 2013

A Rippling Quilt

I've been working on an abstract piece that has a lot of quilting going on in  straight lines across the width of the quilt, both handwork and machine stitching.  There's also a variety of fabrics into the mix on this one, some are pretty thick pieces of hand painted fabric, some burlap and white cotton are commercial fabrics, the rest are hand dyed fabrics I made months ago.

When I finished I noticed that there was enough rippling happening to disturb me because it would keep it from hanging flat.  So, I went onto the SAQA list group and asked for some advice.  It turned out there's one way to avoid it that I learned - stitch only in one direction!  Allright!  For the next time.  But there were a few good options to straighten it out after the fact as well.  I tried the path of least resistance first - the simplest method was to "block" it.  And it worked  - hooray!  Easy, too.  Just took a lot of time to put that many pins into it.  If I hadn't just picked up a new box of pins, I would have had to run out to get them - lucky me and my impulse to buy these little accoutrements to the quilting habit.

Here it is all pinned up and drying:


I still have to bind or face it and I may have to do it again afterwards but that's not a problem - it will lay flat when it's finished.

2 comments:

  1. Nice Janis! Glad you found an online solution. The color palette is brighter than much of your work--or at least, the work I've seen--but I like it. Have you tried Gelly printing on fabric? I've seen some nice results from what people have posted.
    Trish

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  2. Yes, the colors began with hand dyeing so they're very saturated. And yes, I have printed on fabric quite a bit, and I'm planning on dedicating a whole day at it soon. My results so far have not been as good as on paper but if I prepare for a day with just fabric, it should go better. I'll use only fabric paint and mix up the surfaces to find what works best, cotton, PFD, silk, prepared with gesso and ink aid and so on. But as in this case, I often use gel printing as a design/sketching/playing process, rather than a process geared to a finished piece in itself. Too bad we don't live closer - we could have a playdate!

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