Passion Play - Piece 7

The last piece in this quilt is the orange-ish horizontal piece that kind of ties it all together. 

Once again, this is a piece that has several processes on it.  It was a pale orange-pink color after dyeing with some mostly spent dye that mostly washed out.  So I used it for a breakdown screen printing experiment (another type of printing process), and that too mostly washed out!  So last summer during quilt camp, when we made the crackle screens (there are actually 2 versions), I printed on this piece with thickened dye through the crackle screen.  Thankfully, this time the dye was fresh enough that it didn't wash out and you see the result above.  I cut a strip of this to place across the quilt and added some dyed cotton lace and a piece of yarn at the top for a perch for the little bird.

I had to remove the binding from the lace to flatten it out, and after it was machine stitched to the quilt, I embellished it further with hand stitching, using the holes in the lace as a guide.  Click on the photo for a closer look.

Passion Play - Piece 6

Piece 6 in the Passion Play mini quilt is the one at the bottom.  This is another screen printed piece, but very simple. 

This started out like many of the others, a piece of green hand dye that needed some help.  It was printed with a screen called "crackle" that is available in our Etsy shop.  This is the black & white version the screen is made from.

A few quilt camps ago, we experimented with different types of resists like flour paste, rice cereal, oatmeal etc.  This screen is made from one of those resists done on a piece of fabric.  It was a whole lot easier to take a photo of the result and make it into a screen, than to repeat the actual resist process!  The piece below is an example of one created with a resist.  I'm not sure that its the exact piece that the screen was made from, but it is very similar.

Passion Play - Piece 5

Well, here it is, piece 5, the one commercial fabric used in this composition - this beautiful batik!

I hand stitched with perle cotton (#5) with the various threads in the photo below.

If you click on the full image below, you should be able to see the stitching more closely.  It was simply a matter of stitching the lines printed in the batik - easy-peasy.

Passion Play - Piece 4

On to the 4th piece of fabric in this quilt (moving right to left).  This is another piece that was a not-so-great hand-dyed piece.  It looked like this.

Kind of splotchy, not particularly pretty.  So to add another layer of texture I screen printed with an image of a mustard plant flower, with images overlapping, to create an all-over texture.  When I did this particular piece, I think I was actually doing a clean-up technique, using a damp sponge to use up the paint left on the screen before washing.  So this was REALLY a salvage piece!  Here it is after printing.

And then I cut off a strip to use in Passion Play. It gives a subtle pattern and pop of color to the quilt.  So no matter how ugly you think a piece of fabric is, you can always find a place for it, especially by overprinting and cutting it up!

Passion Play - Piece 3

The 3rd piece in this composition is the largest.  It was about 7 x 9 inches, and was actually a test piece for a larger piece, where I was trying out my ideas before working on the "real" piece.  So keep in mind that whatever you make, even if it's just practice or testing ideas, can find a home somewhere.

This is the piece of fabric I started with.  The picture below was taken after the thermofax screen printing with 2 different screens and thickened dye.  But the thickened dye had lost a lot of its effectiveness, so most of what you see here washed out.  When you look at the final piece, you can still see the images from this stage, but they are definitely deep background.

After settling on this piece for my test sample, the next thing I did was print another background image with a round gelli plate.  I used a blue textile paint and used a textured squeegee to make swirls in it.  Then I placed the fabric on the plate and tapped gently to transfer the image to the fabric.  The picture below is of the larger piece after I made the sample. I didn't have a picture of the sample with just the gelli plate added.

Back to the small piece.  The next layer I added was the thermofax print of the ferns.  I used 3 different colors of paint (I think) that I blended with white to lighten the colors.  Here's what the screen image (available in our Etsy shop) looks like, and below that is the picture of the test print.

And finally,  a close up of the part used in Passion Play.  The stitching on the circular gelli print is done with #5 perle cotton in a variegated thread.

Passion Play - Piece 2

I'm working from right to left, so piece 2 is the skinny orange strip.  This one started out as a PFD (prepared for dyeing) piece that was first dyed orange.  Then to make it more interesting, I did some discharge with a thermofax screen  by Lynn Krawczyk of Smudged Textiles Studio.  First, a reminder of the finished piece.

Below is the orange after the discharge has been applied, first with just a corner ironed (heat from the iron activates the DeColourant to remove the color), and second, with the whole piece discharged.

I was creating this piece to use in a table runner for last summer's row by row shop hop, and wanted to incorporate some teal blue to work with the other fabrics I was using.  So I used our bubbles Thermofax screen to print over top of the discharge.  I didn't realize until I heat set the paint that I had used a transparent paint.  So when I ironed it, it receded into the background and the discharge appears to be on top.  No matter.  It works either way!

For the Passion Play piece I used just a strip of what I had left over.

February UFO Busting

It's time to link up with Vicki Welsh of Field Trips in Fiber again for February's UFO Busting report  in our quest to get some UFO's out of the studio.  Click on her badge on the sidebar for a direct link to her post about it.  At the end of every month I'll do a post about what I've accomplished that month, and link it to Vicki's.

February was a fairly productive month, although I've only reduced the UFO list by one. But at least I finished one!  For my end of month count, this is where things stand:

• Projects in progress Feb. 1 -8
• Projects completed - 4
• New projects started - 4
• UFO's trashed - 0
• Projects in progress Feb. 28 -7

First up is the UFO I finished.  It was started two years ago, and after much procrastination is finally finished.  Since I wanted to enter it in a show, it had to get finished - deadlines are a great motivator.

I also made 2 baby ribbon blankets to give as gifts.  These are 15 inch squares with minkie on one side and flannel on the other, and various ribbons stitched into the seam.  Of course, I forgot to take pictures of them before I sent them off, so this pic of a past project will have to do.  This accounts for 2 new projects started and 2 finished.

Then I also started and finished a 12 inch quilt for a bee challenge, which accounts for another new start and finish.

And finally, I have another new start.  This is from a class I took at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival with Frieda Anderson called Duluth Trees.  It is just the top, so counts only as a start, not a finish.

And there you have it, my count for February.  One less UFO, 3 additional completions, and 1 new start.  If I finish 1 UFO a month, I'll have all 7 done by the end of the year!  We'll see how that goes.