Painting shibori ripples with stencils

Mags Ramsay here. In this post I'll be sharing the techniques I developed leading on from the use of torn masking tape stencils used to imitate woodgrain which I talked about here. I'd been doing a lot of indigo arashi shibori dyeing  and wanted to see whether I could get the same ripple effects using paint.

For Contemporary Quilt  Challenge' Horizons' ( 50 x 150cm) my aim was to create the background on the old red quilt I used for 'red flotsam'  to use some of the results of my screenprinting experiments from a few years ago.

 I became quite an expert on ripping 2 inch masking tape into raggy strips! The advantage with masking tape is they can be moved around and adjusted before painting 

Liquitex heavy body acrylics and paddle brushes on stay wet palette. These brushes are excellent for working the paint into the fabric - there's no gesso on this as I wanted the underlying fabric to show through.

 Sample after first lot of  masking tape and painting with blue and red acrylic paints.

2nd lot of making tape applied then 'unbleached titanium' acrylic paint.

 Taped

 Painted

Tape removed

Finished quilt Nautical Dawn -  masses of hand stitching!

Not only did it get selected for the exhibition, it featured on the front cover of the catalogue and then got a Judges choice at the Festival of Quilts this year!

For Cwilt Cymru exhibition on the theme of 'Connection' I deceided to make another version of this, using the same old red and white quilt but introducing more colours and stitching by machine using twin needle. 

 Sample: taped and painted before (above) and with tape removed (below) 

'Red Ripples' ( detail below)