Sixteen Patches for a Raffle

Just a simple lap quilt donated for a fundraiser for the Special Education in our town.  The center block was a leftover; on white muslin I pounded leaves and flowers to stain the cloth.  After heat setting the colors, I stenciled on the design from a stencil I cut.  I used oil based wax with a toothbrush for he stenciling.  Then strips from the scrap heap made the patches for the 16-patch blocks.  Threw it together, machine stitched in the ditch, and off it went to raise funds.

Flower Pounding and Fabric Painting

This was a fun fun project!  I used regular white muslin for the large blocks, and prepared them by pounding them with geraniums, roses, bougainvilleas, and all sorts of other leaves, grasses and flowers from around my yard.  After they dry and get heat set and washed, they became canvasses for hand drawn and cut stencils (cut from freezer paper) painted with oil based paint sticks.  For a stencil brush I used a toothbrush and brushed the color on in circles. A quilt like this cried for some hand quilting, and the colors suggested bright Mexican colors to m, so I dug into my Mexican Themed scraps for the borders and sashing.

Both flower pounding and the oil sticks technique re learned in a great 6 week class I took at he art museum, taught by Jane LaFazio, (http://www.janelafazio.com) a published quilt artist whose creations are often seen at local and even national quilt exhibits.