Fabric Painting and Dying

That's what I was learning to do last week in Sisters, Oregon. Rose Hughes, one of my favorite art quilters, taught the class. It was all part of the Sisters Quilt Show, which is a week long event that includes lots of classes. The last two days of the show, quilts are hung outdoors all over the town. You can see more of Rose Hughes work at http://www.rosehughes.com

Classes are held at the high school, which is an amazing new structure that really shows how much the folks in Sisters care about education. My class was in the Physics lab. I shuddered when I walked in and realized where I was; not too many good memories about Physics in high school. Playing with crayons and paint helped to erase the bad memories.

The photo above (don't mind the strap from my camera) shows three pieces I dyed. There is a special cotton fabric that you use for dying. These are each a yard. The design comes from what you do when you put the fabric in the sun to dry. We laid wet fabric on sheets of plastic in the sun. I swirled a handful of the fabric for the hot pink one. The turquoise one was folded and the purple one was laid flat and then had rock salt poured on it. I think the picture will enlarge when you click on it.

The rock salt produces little bursts of color that are amazing. Next step is to embellish each of the fabrics with paint. The paint we used is Createx airbrush colors although we did not use an airbrush. We mixed paints in a gallon-size Ziploc bag. Then we put the fabric into it and mushed it around. Rose calls it "marinating fabric." We took the bags outside and laid the fabric out in the sun. On two of mine I added a final light spray of gold to give it a subtle shine. So now when I can't find what I want, I can create it. Very wonderful experience.