August 2015

Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!  I love you!

 

So  I had some fun this summer while sitting out on my back porch.  Too hot for the studio, but beautifully perfect in the shade of the porch.  So I watched a video on fabric painting, specially using water based gutta or resist to keep the paint from blending.  All I did to get the feel for it is draw with the resist making different, random shapes.  Then I took fabrics paint and colored it in after the resist dried.  The picture above is the result.  Seeing I wasn't able to FMQ this summer I had to do something.  What a great way to pass a hot summer morning!

Well, it got my creativity up and running, even through I had a quilt at the studio that needed my attention.  Iwas looking at the 3 small circle designs and could see a monkey (upper rightjust above center).  Hmmm, my granddaughter loves monkeys. (Hope she doesn't find out they are not all like Curious George.)  I drew up a quick sketch in my notebook that had the look of resist without resist, decided it would be fun to do and went at it.

So, I enlarged my sketch and traced it onto white fabric.  I layered backing, batting and the picture fabric, then stitched around each shape with 30 weight black cotton thread.  (30 wt. thread is heavy thread.) Quilting done, I used  a thick fabric paint that does not run, painting in each shape.  What's  fun about fabric paint?  It is easy to match the colors of store bought fabrics.  I used only red, yellow and blue for all the colors in the fabric painting.

Added the borders and back from a yard of stripes.

The end result was a big fat pillow for my granddaughter's 6th birthday.


Happy Birthday, Sweetie!!  I love you.

Enjoying my blessings,
Grams