Tag Archives: sky fabric

Hand Painted Fabric Giveaway

As I continue to clear out drawers and cupboards I’d like to thank everyone for stopping by, for commenting to enter the giveaways, and for helping me re-home some of my artistic pieces.

I used to have a large paint/wet area in my studio, but my Mister decided to park the car in there and I decided to move my studio into the house… My move may have had something to do with the purple paint splatters on our white car, but I’ll never tell!

The fabric pieces in this May-June sweepstakes/giveaway were painted on my large homemade stretcher frame (about 43″ x 19″). Here is a link for the smaller frame that I use more now a days. Below is a old video of the larger frame in action.

These fabrics are not up to my picky standards but they still have great potential. They could be used as is, over painted, stamped, stenciled, stitched, cut up, or ? Let me know in the comments your ideas, and to enter this giveaway comment with which fabric you’d like a chance to win. See all rules below and please remember leave a reply/comment here for all to see.

Note that the actual fabric color/value/intensity may appear different than the photos shown here. The photos are of each piece folded in half, so they’re twice as wide. The usable piece is approximately 42″ x 18″. The sky/sea pieces are painted on 100% Pima type cotton and Fallen is on a fabric closer to regular quilters cotton.

Pastel Sunset *(note that the lower edge is yellow-orange not green).*

Sweepstakes/giveaway begins May 26, 2021, and ends at 4pm (Pacific Time) June 14, 2021.

To enter: You must live in the US only (no international entries). One entry per person. NOTE: If your name is drawn for one piece of fabric, it will be removed for any other piece of fabric.

Leave a comment that you would like to win a particular piece of fabric or any one of them, include your first and last name (or last initial). If you’re not subscribed to my blog, you may want to as that may be the only way you’ll find out if you’ve won.

On June 15, 2021 I’ll use a random drawer and announce the winners on my next blog post. Winners will email me their mailing information and I will mail the fabrics ASAP. If I don’t hear from the winner within five days of drawing date, I will run another random draw. Good luck!

Looking Up

I’m from a family of sky watchers. My parents lived just up the hill from where we live and my mom would often phone in the evenings, all she’d say was “sky alert!.” I would know that meant go upstairs and look out. My folks are gone but rarely do we miss a morning or evening of looking out and up. Here are a few of those skies…

That may be why I love painting sky fabric so much, that and wanting special skies for my landscapes quilts. I can’t make much art yet but I was able to paint a mini sky fabric and make the how-to video (see below).

Fabric Painting a Fluorescent Sky was so much fun and easy, requiring minimal supplies and materials.

Have you painted sky fabric to use in your art?

Snow and Art Quilts

The Mister and I recently took a road trip to visit family in Reno, Nevada. We have driven through heavy falling snow a couple times in the past; this was much more enjoyable. We were traveling after a storm, the hwy had been mostly plowed and was only a little icy. There was very little traffic and sky was gorgeous. These photos were taken using my cell phone, through the window while moving pretty fast, please excuse any blur.

The smooth white land, sprinkled with black cows, horses, and odd old structures was spectacular. I must have said “It’s beautiful” one hundred times! It’s a nice place to visit but I don’t think I could live there. If you do, you are most certainly hardier than I!

At the side of the road the plow left a cut wall that, to me, looked like a slab of marble… miles and miles of marble!

Even though snow isn’t usually a part of my life, snowy scenes have found their way into some of my art quilts (with much artistic liberty ;<))

Fabric and Gunpowder!

I really enjoy the blog …And Then We Set It On Fire… The contributors are individual fiber artists who work in and explore a multitude of surface design techniques and more; sometimes working together. I once had the pleasure of being a guest artist on FIRE!

One of their recent blog posts did more than catch my eye. My interest was really sparked when I read that Kelly Hendrickson and Wil Opio Oguta, the two artists posting on FIRE this month, had been exploring the use of GUNPOWDER on fabric!

I have tried many different techniques over the years, here are some…

shibori opening detail — Shibori pole wrapped straight, using Jacquard Textile Color paints

anns shibori painted — Shibori pole wrapped on diagonal using Jacquard Textile Color paints

tube shibori — Shibori rope wrapped using dye

stamping, dripping, splattering, flour resist, stencil made on the sewing machine; painted and stenciled onto fabric made on a plastic tarp, rubbings with wax pastels, painted cheesecloth, melted Lutradur, burnt silk, just painting, and lots and lots of hand painted sky and landscape fabric… but never gunpowder!

Kelly and Wil have publish an e-book the explores their gunpowder techniques (I just bought it!), I hope you will visit “…And Then We Set It On Fire…” and each of their websites – I think you’ll have a blast!

Thanks to Kelly and Wil for letting me share their gunpowder post!

Painted Fabric and a Binding Question

Yesterday I started the day by painting fabric, then I did a bit of quilting and worked on another lesson for my up coming Curious.com course and I did do a few of those pesky household chores. Those are some of my favorite things (except the chores), painting and surface design way up on the top of that list.

Here is a slice of a triptych I’m working on. I used textile paints, a flour resist and wax pastels. I wrote about my “scab” fabric a few posts back. Well, the parched earth part of this triptych is what was under that “scab” but here it has wax pastels applied over it. The center water area is actually the back of a larger piece of painted fabric and the sky above it is from the front of that fabric. I’m quilting it now, when it’s finished I’ll post the entire piece. But…

I’m not sure how to bind it because of the design running from one edge to the next third. If I add my Butted corner binding I would piece the binding so the blue has blue binding and the brown has brown but still I’m afraid it would stop or break the design. I could satin stitch or stitch over cording on the edge the way Carol Ann Waugh does. Any ideas? How would you finish the edges of this piece?

Triptych slice Part of one third

Quilting Away

If you haven’t free-motion quilted or thread painted but wanted to, I encourage you to just jump in! I have had to get over a lot of hang ups because I came from the “hand quilting, perfect stitches, and needle turn applique” mindset. ~~Working~~ Playing with my Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen machine and thread has been some of the most fun I have had in my fiber art career. But this can be done on a home sewing machine too!

I’m so fortunate that I get to do this and call it “work!” I’m about to quilt the sky on this commissioned piece, after yards and yards of thread and many hours of free-motion quilting the flowers and foliage. Here are a couple detail photos… The sky and most of the flower fabric were painted by me and the butterfly (and birds which don’t show in these photos) will be a lesson I hope to be giving on Curious.com/fiberdesignsbyann in the future.

And onward I go…

I have received my “not accepted” notice so I can share this now.

Dwell is a landscape
Of ancient land and buried fossils,
Of old cave homes or modern cliff mansions,
Of winds and nature propelling progressive discoveries.

dwell fossil detail — Dwell
Back quilting detail

I enjoyed the challenges of creating this art quilt and I am very happy with the completed piece. It started as a hand painted whole cloth, it also has some painted fusing, hand stitching and a great amount of free-motion machine sketching and quilting (see detail of the fossils). It was fun to try to paint binding fabric that would work well AND succeed! It measures 30″ high by 42″ wide and will be for sale.

Painting skies

One of my favorite things to do in the studio is to transform white cotton fabric into painted sky fabric. Here are three little skies that kick off the same landscape. The sky is what determines where I will go when selecting fabric for the other elements. The landscapes (or waterscapes) will not look like they came from the same master line drawing in the end… I love that!

Fiber Designs by Ann

Fiber art Design, Instruction, Sales