A Bird from LeeAnna

A little bird came all the way from Maryland last week. LeeAnna Paylor  made this little quilt for me in exchange for a set of my coffee cup coasters. He is hanging now over my sewing area and reminding me of my new blog friend and encouraging me to be creative.

At the CQFA meeting a couple of weekends ago, we did a project together inspired by Susan Carlson’s technique of creating pictures from tiny scraps of fabric. My project is quickly taking a detour from the original concept and going it’s own way.

Transparent paint used to stencil across the fabric scraps ended up much darker than I had planned, so I added scraps of yellow organza over much of the paint to tone it down. I didn’t like how the black tulle I had was dulling the yellow down, so I am using a sheet of transparent water soluble stabilizer to hold everything together until it is quilted. Then it will probably get another layer of paint.

Sun Printed Spirals

I tried using paper stencils to sun print spirals and tree shapes onto fabric. Did my first color both outside and inside with a 150W bulb. I actually got better results from doing it inside, plus I didn’t have to deal with any breezes blowing the paper stencils away.

Some interesting results happened by layering a green paint and stencils over the yellow, but the results are too subtle for what I want. I tried to order soy wax to use as a resist. Am waiting now since it is out of stock. 

Playing with Shapes

A few months ago at our CQFA meeting we did a shape exchange. Each of us cut two shapes, and exchanged one of our shapes with another member with, the thought that each of would make a quilt incorporating both our shape and our exchange partners shape. I exchanged my tree shape with Sonja who cut a spiral.

Christmas break gave me some spare time to think about actually doing something with my shapes. I think I am going to do some sun printing and maybe some stamping in layers. I tried the idea out in Illustrator today. This also allowed me to test some colors. I think I will go forward with this project and start painting some fabric.

Coffee Cup Coasters

Here are the results of my silk screening project. I gave some sets like these away for Christmas presents before I took any photos. Then I made another set for myself plus a few extras. I have lots of leftover prints which I thought I would give away to quilter friends.


I decided I liked the prints better on fabrics which were printed with an allover large scale print. I only had a couple of small upholstery samples, so off to the fabric store for some printed canvas.

Not all of the words showed up well do to the problems I had developing the screen, and a few of the details have been lost from my design. But overall, I think it was a successful project and a good learning experience. I may opt to cut stencils or get thermofax stencils made for future screening projects.

Go to Off the Wall Friday to see what others have been up to this week. There are some great things up there already.