Bush Walk

I hope that the Christmas break was just what you needed. I have spent time at the lake, just swimming and lazying about.

I want to try some “Sun Dye-ing. Dye the fabric, place object on the fabric, secure and leave in the sun. The dye wicks from under the objects so the dye appears around the objects.
Picked up lancewood leaves and leaf skeletons while walking up Mt Ngongotaha. Made up a green/blue textile ink solution and painted half the fabric. Then mixed in some more blue to make it darker green and a splash of red, which I didn’t fully mix, and I wanted to see “what would happen if”.

The leaves and skeletons were pinned in random manner to the painted fabric, and left it in the sun to dry. Amazing, the fine leaf skeletons work and look so delicate. The solid lancewood leaves had blurred edges, due to the wind, so need to pin more surely. Tried the technique on woven flax with ponga fern, but the ink absorbed straight into the flax – it didn’t work.
To add texture to the sun dyed fabric, I made a stencil with leaves with freezer paper, and rubbed gold, copper, silver and green paint sticks around the stencil, and brushed the paint inwards, to create a translucent effect.

I hand quilted leave shapes with gold metallic thread, and variegated green around the leaves.
Couched some “jazz” yarn in 3 meandering lines, creating a vertical composition.
I know you can buy some special Helio (sun dying) paints, but for my experiment the textile ink worked okay. Will consider using this technique again.

Flax “Harakeke”

Purchased a woven flax bag from the $2 shop, and after cutting it to A5 size, I stitched the edges to prevent it falling to pieces as it is loosely woven.

I laid masking tape out in a grid and cut to make line and some squares. Shiva Paint Stiks again, green, brown, and gold. A paper towel seemed to work best rubbing in the colour. When dire, and making tape remove, the paint colour changed the look of the woven mat. Perhaps it could have been rubbed all over, and not masked off, or painted first, then sections masked, and another colour rubbed over top?>
The flax pattern by Jenny Hunter, out of the NZ Quilter magazine was enlarged, rotated ,and printed onto freezer paper. Ironed the pattern onto a yellow/orange print fabric. Double sided Vilene was ironed to the back, and the flax pattern cut our, following the freezer paper lines.

After ironing the flax cut out to the woven flax background, I satin stitched the fabric outline, trying to reduce the width at the points. Initially I didn’t use stabiliser, but in the end I did put some on the back and this made stitching the woven mat much easier.

After making up the quilt sandwich, I used green thread and outlined around the flax, and then changed to gold metallic thread and continued echo quilting.