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20 October 2009

Breaking out

At last, real action on the quilt for CQ's Breakthrough challenge. A chance remark at the Knitting & Stitching show led to the purchase of silver and white textile printing paints. I used potatoes to print these "eggs" -Before printing, section by section, I bonded snippets of bright fabric -
Sometimes they stuck to the potato, but the random blank areas seemed to work just fine. So did the more heavily printed sections. Mostly I used a paintbrush to apply the paint to the potato, but there was also a foam pad in intermittent use. And sometimes I took two prints from one inking. White and silver were used randomly.

Though I'd drawn out a plan for the sections, using three sizes of "egg", it got adjusted along the way, and once the middle area was done, each new section was a new decision - what size egg? how many rows? what colours of fabric?
The size of the black linen (salvaged from some unwanted but hardly worn trousers) was 70x70 - I'd planned to cut it down to 60x60cm, but that would have diminished the piece. So I left it as is, and started printing another piece of black cloth - marked out to the correct size.
Also, I added "breakout" pieces to some of the eggs - and some strips printed on velvet. Those would be caught down by the lines of vertical quilting, about 1/4" apart. This pic shows the quilt before quilting, trimming, and binding.

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