Poison!

My creative friend Misty Cole has designed an unusual and intriguing block of the month - poison bottles! She asked me to interpret two of them, so here they are.

The first bottle looks a lot like Misty's sample. I chose a brown background, and because of the word "poison" I couldn't stop thinking about poison ivy, so I added some. I thought it looked sort of like an old bottle you might find tucked in the back of a barn, and wouldn't it be ironic for it to be sitting in some poison ivy?

Pre-stitching

The background and bottle were created from fabrics I designed in photoshop, while the leaves are hand dyed.

I think it's kind of fun.

The next bottle Misty calls a "coffin" bottle. Well, it looked kind of like a vase to me, so I went with that. I went a little wild and carefree with this one, screen printing the flowers and using some fabric I designed for the vase.

Pre-stitching

After quilting.

I was going for sort of a retro cut glass look on the bottle.

I like the flowers, but feel that the white ones still need something - maybe a few lazy daisies in the centers and some French knots?

If you'd like to join in the fun head over to Misty's blog and download these free patterns.

Thanks for inviting me to play, Misty!

Must. Stop. Screen Printing.

I don't know what it is about screen printing, but it seems that once I start I just can't stop.

I've been writing a little article involving screen printing for an upcoming edition of Quilting Arts. Perhaps the hardest part of writing an article, for me, is being satisfied with my samples and examples. Two things got me to stop (or at least slow down) the sample making this time: the deadline, and I ran out of screens to burn.

Here's a print that is not in the article:


Trust me when I say that this is much better in real life. The leaves are various metallic colors, as is the leopard moth. However, I really feel that the moth needs more oomph. Perhaps that can be added with an outline of the moth by either more screen printing or some quilting. The dots need something too. It's a work in progress and I do have plans for it.

In the meantime I started playing with the image in Photoshop. Here's what I've got so far.

I really get a kick out of both techniques - playing with paint and playing with pixels. What do you think?