Monday, February 18, 2013

Scrunch Dyeing - finished project

I decided to use some of my fabric from my scrunch dyeing experiments in a free-form art quilt.  I combined some of the fabrics with some other hand dyed fabrics as well as commercial fabrics from my stash, and created some strip sets and blocks.  After auditioning several combinations on my design board, I settled on a grouping, stitched the top, then got inspired to try doing a little embroidery to embellish the middle.  I generally use lead pencil to sketch designs on my fabric, but thoughtlessly grabbed a graphite pencil and ended up with a smudged mess!  So I decided to complete the quilt, then launder it to remove the smudges, and I am so happy I decided to do that!  Ordinarily, I use fusbile interfacing to create my art and landscape quilts, but in this case, everything was done with stitching, so it was possible to launder the piece, creating some wonderful textures!  Afterward, I used a lead pencil to sketch a vine on the middle strip, and added some embroidery to the square on the right top quadrant, enhancing a design that came from dyeing the fabric with a portion wrapped around a button with a daisy design.  Okay, enough words!  Here is the project:
I used free-motion quilting on the border, the upper right square and the lower left square.  The rest was 'in the ditch' quilting.

Closeup of the flower - the design was very faint without the embroidery embellishment.


















Closeup of the scrunched square with free-motion quilting.  I am calling this piece 'Tribute', in honor of my Mother, Step-Mother, Grandmothers and Great Grandma, all of whom were inspirational to me through their talents in various fiber arts.  I hope this will inspire you to not only try the dyeing techniques I demonstrated here, but also to use the fabrics you create.  One thing I have learned is that they look much better in projects than they do in my storage boxes! Thanks for reading and participating in the discussions here!

3 comments:

  1. I just find it SO interesting to see how people use these beautiful fabrics. I have some ideas but won't be able to work on anything till after April! You all keep inspiring me, though.

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  2. Beautiful color choices with this. Your embroidery in it is great too. A very nice finished project. Thanks for posting.

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  3. Thank you so much for sharing! It's great to see how you've used the scrunched dying fabric in a project. I'm always at a loss as to how to combine them with other fabrics!

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