She Paints With Fabric

"She Paints With Fabric," 19" x 25.5", made by Pam Geisel, April 2016

This month the Island Batik Ambassador's are creating pieces for #AprilShowersIB Challenge! The final size was up to us. but we were encouraged to use images of Spring including: umbrellas, rain gear, spring flowers, farm life, weather, bugs, plants and seeds, or pond and water. So many good inspirations! I decided to go with spring flowers, specifically poppies.

In May and June I will be exhibiting with my friend Libby Rudolf who paints watercolor paintings. It was decided that to commemorate our exhibit, she would make a painting of someone quilting and I would make a quilt of someone painting.

I went through my Island Batik fabrics and just like last month with the minis, I mostly used the Sea Salt Sandy fabrics. I thought they were the perfect choice since they look like they were splattered with paint. (I did use a cream-colored piece for the hand and the face from a different collection).

For the painting itself, I used lighter colors of fabric to keep it from disappering in the background. Her hair is yarn that was couched down. The subtle shadow on her right arm was made by drawing on with a brown fabric marker. I don't usually draw on fabrics but since these had the splatter marks it seemed like it wouldn't be too distracting.

The flowers in the foreground are made with fabric. The flowers in the background are red sequins with red glass seed beads on top. And the flowers in the painting, which are even smaller, are just the glass seed beads. The small cans of paint were and afterthought but the splatters on the outside of the can seemed appropriate.

In our last shipment, we also received some Superior brand thread. I got these three spools of variegated Fantastico thread. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've never used Superior thread before now. I've been having some issues with thread breakage when doing free motion quilting. I wasn't sure if it was me, the machine, or the thread. Now I'm pretty sure it was the thread because this thread worked perfectly!

I used the blue/green thread (#5070) on the left in the sky with a large, stippling type quilting.

And I used the green/yellow thread (#5156) in the grass. I did a dense pattern of vertical zigzags to indicate the direction the grass was going. I also couched some thread for the poppy stems.

You can click on any of the photos to see them larger.

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