Quilting Along With Leah Day - Week 26

Remember Tree Roots from Week 24? Well it has undergone a metamorphosis.

Tree Roots Transformed

Rather than Quilting Along with Leah this week we are Painting Along with Leah. I have been painting, dying, stamping and inking fabric for over fifteen years. It is something I try, but am never seduced into focusing on for more than a day or two at a time. A friend once said if she were meant to sew her own clothes than why were there so many department stores? I feel the same way about taking the time to develop and use my surface design skills. Why bother when there are so many wonderful commercial fabrics out there? Of course the answer is for the precise reason Leah opted to paint a portion of her current goddess quilt - to enhance and improve the work in a way that stitching and piecing can not.

Close Up of Tree Roots after Painting

I am a sucker for shimmer, so Leah's recommendation of using Jacquard Lumiere paints called to me. No surprise, despite my extensive collection of stencil paints, Seta Color paints, Shiva Paint Stix, fabric pens and dyes I didn't own any Jacquard Lumiere paints. I ordered and received a starter kit of paints. This way I would have 8 colors to play with.

What I quickly discovered is that the color in bottle is not what the color looks like on the fabric. I only had one green to choose from. I played with adding yellow to it. I tried adding blue. Nothing got the color I was looking for. If this had been a formal piece versus a practice piece I would have started with gold and added a hint of green in order to achieve a higher contrast with the background fabric. The paints did glide on quite nicely and stayed put versus bleeding into the fabric.

Fabric is White Muslin That Has Been Hand Painted
With Heliographic Paints and then Enhanced
With Free Form Leaves Painted with Jacquard Lumiere Paints

I had extra paint left after completing the Tree Roots project. I added some black Neopaque paint to the green Lumiere paint. I was hoping for a deep leaf green but got a dark olive bronze shade instead. Rather than use a stencil as I did with Tree Roots, I simply free hand painted a series of falling leaves onto a fabric I had hand painted with heliographic paints years ago.

Close Up of Free Form Leaves

The hand of the fabric where the Jacquard paint has been applied is pretty stiff. It is not so stiff that the fabric can't be folded or rolled. I do wonder if I would be able to stitch through it. That will be the next test.

Quilting Along with Leah Day - Week 24

I am curator of a traveling exhibition for Fiber Artists Coalition, titled Conversations in Stitch. When I was recently interviewed about the exhibit for a newspaper article the journalist asked about the title and what I was trying to convey with the work I had selected. Here is what I told her. The work may appear as quite an eclectic collection at first. However, shapes, colors and subject matter repeat throughout the exhibition but are interpreted differently by different artists. I suggested to the journalist that she look at the many ways that trees are rendered in the artwork.

Full View of Tree Roots Practice Piece

Leah's latest assignment has us practicing a free motion quilting with a pattern called Tree Roots. How apropos. We have moved from beginner stitching to advanced beginner level. Tree Roots requires not only plotting our route but back tracking, or travel stitching.

Close Up of Tree Roots
Note Some Travel Stitching is Not detectible
While Other Travel Stitching is Obvious 

You may recall that the prior assignment was titled Branching Out. Tree Roots and Branching Out are basically the same, but the roots are slightly curved while the branches are all straight lines set at angles to each other. I found it more challenging to travel stitch along a gently curved line than a straight line.

It is easier to see the overall pattern that Tree Roots creates by viewing the back side of the practice piece. I purposefully select a commercial fabric with various hues and values as my front. Since that is the type of fabric I use for most of my quilts. However, to demonstrate my stitching acume (or not) I use solid fabrics on the backside.

Back Side of Tree Roots Practice Piece

There is nothing like a closeup to on solid fabric to show every single stitch...

Detail of the Back Side of Tree Roots

If you want to get an even closer look you can click on any picture and it will be enlarged.