Going Bananas

Last month, after I finished my hummingbird quilt, I wrote that my small art group would be switching themes from birds to food. We're working through the Art Quilt Workbook, by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston and this month's assignment was to make a project based on chapter 6 - paint effects.

I did a pretty good job of obtaining the supplies relatively early on. After some difficulty in figuring out where to obtain fabric paints (I wasn't sure about RIT, which was all I could seem to see at Jo-Ann's that didn't look like puffy paint for other kinds of artistry), I discovered that Artist and Display carries Dye-na-Flow paints, and I also purchased some Polished Pigments by LuminArte (ground pigments mixed with micas, which give it some shimmer) from Quilting Arts magazine's web store, and I purchased some plain white fabric (I forget which brand) from the LQS.

But then it the supplies just sat there. Because I was afraid to start. I knew what I wanted to paint - I had to have an idea so I knew what colors of paints to purchase. I'd settled on bananas from the time of our last meeting. But I waited until the night before our meeting to actually attempt painting as I suspected I'd do something remarkably horrible. Painting's similar to drawing, right? And I can't draw ...

While I have not yet turned these into completed projects, here are my results.

First, the Dye-na-flow paints:


And the Polished Pigments, for comparison:


As you can see, I'm not great with control; I don't know if I needed a thinner brush (I was using a "1") or if I used too much paint, or what. The paints were quite thin, so the paint definitely "wicked" across the fabric. Thank goodness I had thought to purchase some resist! I do think that I can turn these into something interesting with a bit of thread-painting, and I'm glad I tried both brands of paints because I think I could use each of them in different kinds of ways (the Dye-na-Flow colors are stronger, but the others have a very nice shimmer to them).

Earlier in the post I mentioned that I wasn't certain about RIT. One of the others in the group followed an article in the December/January issue of Quilting Arts to dye fabrics with the RIT dyes, and it looked pretty good. So I purchase a few packets at Jo-Ann's yesterday and look forward to giving those a shot as I hadn't yet had a chance to peruse the article (and I 've been carrying it around in my "Mary Poppins" bag). I'll definitely post results!