Playing with paint and paste

I have been playing with paint and discharge paste on quilted surfaces. It has been quite fun and gave me a reason to practise my machine quilting. I made four small samples of about 8 inches square and did some fairly dense machine quilting, practising breathing at the same time. It’s true what they say that you hold your breath when you start out. I still have to remind myself to breathe

I chose the multi-coloured flower print to see how quilting and painting could tone down a busy print. I used oil sticks and masking tape on this piece. Even with just the quilting and a coloured thread this already toned it down quite a bit. I used three colours of paint stick – antique white, burgundy and dark brown. I feel the darker colours are more successful at toning down.

The white sample was more an experiment in adding interest to a fairly plain area. I used fabric paints here. I applied the blue with a foam roller and using masking tape. I felt something more was needed so added the red circles freehand with a paint brush. I had just the upper circle at first, but it looked a bit like a silly face so I added the second circle below. I think it has a Japanese feel to it. That was also the first comment that Sqeze made too.

I originally intended making two samples with discharge paste, but it only worked on one of the fabrics I chose. So I painted the second sample instead. I made a freezer paper stencil for the leaves on the green piece and I think that ironing it onto the quilted surface squashed the quilting too much so that the valleys disappeared and the discharge paste didn’t just stay on the hills. I used a foam roller to apply the paste and only a light pressure as with the textile paint, so that I expected better results than I got. I found the discharge alone rather dull so I used a thin cardboard stencil and oil sticks to add more leaf shapes on top.

The grey piece was the piece where the discharge paste had no effect so after washing and drying I used textile paint applied with a roller. First I applied the green stripes with masking tape. But that was too stark a contrast to the circles printed on the fabric and spirals in the quilting so I added a second layer of white circles with another thin cardboard stencil. I learnt my lesson with ironed on freezer paper stencils and the thin cardboard ones worked just as well.

I’ve included before and after photos and as usual you can click on a smaller image to see a larger one.

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