Awakening the ART in the fabric

I have been a quilter for 40 years, and an art quilter for just the past ten years. I have also been a painter in acrylics and watercolor. Over the past ten years I have dabbled in many techniques and styles of creating art quilts.

But in the past year or two I have been drawn to working with hand dyed, ice dyed or sun printed fabric as my base canvas and incorporating some type of painting on these surfaces.

I have not done much fabric dyeing myself but have used the dyed yardage I have purchased from other fiber artists. When I work with paints to create my own sun printed fabric, I tend to experiment with unique patterns. I find this process to be very improvisational and fascinating.

The art piece I made for the SAQA Florida Awakening Exhibit started with a sun printed fabric. My process begins by pinning the fabric to my design wall and just looking at it for a time to see what I find in the patterns. I then start to develop what I see using Inktense pencils and blocks and sometimes additional fabric paints.

Here is the picture of my sun printed fabric before enhancing it. It was created with fabric paints on dampened fabric pleated and crimped and set to dry in the sun. Looking at the fabric I saw tree trunks, leaves and vining plants at the base of the trees.

Sun printed fabric

As I began to enhance what I saw the composition started taking shape.  You can see in the next picture the trees and leaves evolving.  At this stage I had two flowers that were not kept in the final result.  This speaks to the flexibility of using Inktense products rather than paint or dyes.  You can often rework and downplay or eliminate mistakes when the composition takes a new direction.

Enhanced fabric

And the last photo below shows the final quilt.  Somewhere along the line I skimmed over the fabric with the pigment in an Inktense block, and random dots appeared which developed into fireflies.   The fireflies are escaping from the dropped jar lost by a little girl camping with her family nearby just outside the composition. The fireflies escape the jar as they awaken to their freedom into the night sky. This piece is heavily free motion quilted and should be seen in person.

“Escape of the Fireflies”

This piece is titled “Escape of the Fireflies” and is included in the SAQA Florida Exhibit “Awakening” along with the art of 26 other Florida fiber artists.  This exhibit is touring our fine state of Florida and will next be on display for just two days March 8 and 9 in the Southwest Florida Quilters Guild – Quilt Show, at the Charlotte Harbor Event and Convention Center followed by the Visual Arts Center in Punta Gorda, Florida May 13 through May 24.  See details and the rest of the exhibit schedule by clicking on the Awakening icon at the gallery home page www.gallerytextileartsaqafl.com.   

Enjoy more of Doris Hulces work