I didn't like these two pieces so I set them aside, with the advent of my new series Harvest, I decided to experiment and sure enough they needed some sketches as well. Lets just say I'm reviewing my entire Prairie Potholes Series now for it's potential to be changed!
Front of the quilt, I did some lose bound resist so you can still see the pink from the madder lac bath behind the blue. Typically if you over dye with indigo you WILL strip the base colors some if not completely.
I couldn't wait until tomorrow to over dye this piece so I dipped it six times in an indigo vat tonight, say 11:45 pm! And lets just say this is a major improvement over the previous color. Currently it's air drying over my shower curtain rod in the bathroom, silk side down on the rusty part of the rod!!!
Well this is the before shot from about two years ago, everyone said it needed color, and they were right - to some extent. I do love the white on white work in this piece, I think a lot of folks just don't get subtlies of abstract art, I know my husband certainly doesn't.
Shot of the front the darker pink is Tsukineko ink that was mixed with aloe vera and applied with a dauber. It was never heat set so imagine my suprise when it came through the bath, and two trips through the washer and dryer, intact!
Detail of th wool batting notice it's pink coloring.
And it's taken a couple of years to get through this one! I"m thinking of compost and rust dyeing this piece next. Silk dupioni front, cotton fabric backing, and wool batting, it has been sitting in a Madder lac dye bath for about a week, no premordanting. I think the bath may have exhausted after the first rounds of silk fabrics that went through.
Top pic is of the fabric before I started applying shiva paintstiks - I"m no where near being done with the surface of this piece, and then it needs to be stitched!!! My shiva iridescent blender is NOT cooperating, time to dig out a new one. Everytime I went to draw a line on the fabric it wouldn't lay down color, if I pressed harder it just started flaking apart not fun at all, I've had this blender for about four years now so that could be a part of the problem.
I've never been to a coral reef, just seen them in photos etc., so no where near being close to the real thing. I have 4 maybe 5 pieces of fabric that ended up looking like coral, well ot me anyway, so this is the nature of my newest series of art quilts.
