Deep Sea Ballet in Fiber - Scene 3

I'm ecstatic to report that I completed my 38"(w) x 42"(l) "Deep Sea Ballet" whole cloth, art quilt last evening.   I'm quite excited about it and am chomping at the bit to post a picture of the entire piece; however, as mentioned earlier, it may be exhibited in August, so I still must wait until the exhibit has opened.  Thus, only close ups of some elements will be posted here.

Henri Matisse's work, La Danse, was a constant inspiration as I created this work.  Perhaps you can see how Matisse's painting influenced the "Deep Sea Ballet" fiber art work.

In order to accentuate the suggestion of water movement I inserted piping between the top and the batting and stitched on either side of to create a raised effect an upward motion.

 I created upward "floating" sea flora by sewing together strips of hand dyed stretchy fabric.  After the strips were sewn together, I slashed the edges and then machine stitched the streamers to the top. The green ocean bottom image was made from a loosely woven scarf that I free motion stitched over the "base" of the sea flora and to the quilt top fabric.

To further suggest ocean flora, I hand cut a stencil from freezer paper and stenciled it with Setacolor opaque and transparent paints.

 Until August, this will probably be the last time I write about this work.  Once it is hung in the exhibit, I'll post a picture of the finished work.

Thank you for taking this deep sea journey with me.  It's been great fun.

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

© Linda Friedman 2015.  All rights reserved

From Small Block Print to Large Stencil - A How-to Guide

I am presently developing a quilted art work in which I am using one image in a variety of orientations, sizes and colors.  It started with a very large bird image that will appear on the front of the quilt but I also wanted it to appear on the reverse side. 

                                 From this                                  to this...

First I cut a block,

Soft Kut Printing Block

I printed the block in my sketchbook,

I cropped the top image and printed it in 2x2 

poster format and taped the pages together.

Next I cut enough freezer paper to cover the image

 

Here is the freezer paper laid over the image 

with the shiny side down.

 I traced around the image with a 

fine tip permanent marker.

A stencil is now ready to be cut with a craft knife,

BUT,.,

Before beginning to cut, I removed the posterized

 image from under the freezer paper.

Here is the beginning of the stencil cutout.

Here is what the partially cut stencil looked like.  

The remainder of the shapes were ultimately cut out.

I ironed the the fully cut out freezer paper stencil to

 the fabric on which I wanted the image to appear.

I used a plate as a makeshift palette, foam brush

and Setacolor opaque white fabric paint to paint

the stencil.

And here is the finished stenciled image that I believe

 successfully suggests a very large block print.

 

Always remember, never fear to experiment.  

Sometimes wonderful things happen.

 

 © Linda Friedman 2014.  All rights reserved.