This quilt was made about 10 years ago. The design was inspired by an antique coverlet from the crazy patch era of quiltmaking.
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| Quilt embellished with Shiva oil paintsticks. 54" x 64" |
The centers of the blocks were hand embellished using Shiva Artist's Paintstiks and rubbing plates. Remember when oil paint sticks came on the radar of the art quilters? I was there. Yep, I was experimenting with them.
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| Centers of the quilt blocks embellished with oil paintsticks and rubbing plates. |
So instead of decorative hand embroidery stitches on the blocks of this crazy patch-inspired quilt, I decorated the blocks by hand with colorful iridescent oil paints.
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| Free-motion quilting using Mirage, a 30 wt. rayon thread. |
I was also new to free-motion quilting and crushing on
Mirage, a 30 wt. rayon thread, and
Accent, a 12 wt. rayon thread from
Wonderfil Specialty Threads. These variegated threads have gorgeous colorways. It was easy to show them off on the black sashing and solid batiks used in this quilt.
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| The color of the paintstiks before washing. |
Last week, I decided to wash this quilt to see how the oil paints would hold up.
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| The paintstick colors held up from washing. |
They did just great! No noticeable loss of color saturation. The quilt was washed in cool water, gentle cycle on speed wash (yes, in the washing machine). As expected, the 100% cotton batting caused the typical fabric puckering, but that was about all that changed.
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| Detail: block embellished with oil paint sticks after washing. |
I've used the Artist's Paintstiks for surface design on other fabric items. It's a fun process and there is an abundance of rubbing plates, textures, stencils and the like that you can use with them. Follow the directions for use, care and how to work with these oil paints on fabric. There is a time period you must wait for the oils to dissipate before washing... but it's
much less than 10 years.
