John Marshall Workshop

This is a stencil that John made of his good friend holding a duck.  When I first picked up this stencil, I did not see the duck.  He showed me the outline of the duck and how to accentuate areas of the stencil using the indigo pigment.  You can barely see it, but there is a touch of green in his jeans.

 The Ibis stencil is lighter in color.  I dipped it in the light indigo vat.  There is a touch of blue in the winged figure on the top left.

 The Rooster stencil was very intricate.  There is a double row of dots all around the framing.  I used the red pigment on the roosters crown and feet.

 The plantation worker is dressed  very much like my grandmother Sato.  She worked on a sugar and pineapple plantation in Hawaii for 25 years and raised 10 kids.  Her features are not quite my grandmas, but the clothes and hat really captures the image.  There is a touch of brown pigment in the staff.

Daruma is such a strong character.  The fabric this is printed on is a loosely woven linen.  The indigo blue is very lovely.  For some reason, I think this stencil came out the best.  No color pigments were applied.

I really enjoyed John Marshalls indigo workshop. I hope to write more about the indigo vats, the rice bran resist and the soymilk wash.  For now, I'll just enjoy the images.

Looks like suede

 Looks like suede is completed.  This is a log cabin quilt.  I don't know if the pattern has a name, but I just placed it 4 patches with all the lights in the middle and alternated it with 4 patches with all the darks in the middle.  Originally, the quilt was going to be a third of the size.  It all started when Betsy showed us her Amish inspired quilt that she made using Cherrywood fabric.  I loved the way the fabric looked like suede and asked where she got it.  She found it at PIQF and bought a grab bag of 7x9 inch fabric pieces.

 At the PIQF last year, I bought 1 grab bag and 1 cherry roll from Cherrywood fabrics.  To make the most of these 2 selections, I cut the 2 and 1/2 inch strips in half.  So I had a lot of 1 1/4 inch strips.  Then I cut up all the grab bag pieces into 1 1/4 inch strips and laid them all in a box.  The lights and the darks were sorted in the box.  Starting with a 1 1/4 inch square, I pieced the log cabin square.

This is a closeup of the quilting.  I ended up buying 2 more grab bags and 1 more cherry roll to make it into a queen size quilt.  This has a wool batting, a hand dyed backing fabric and a red border.  I used red aurifil 12 wt thread in the quilting.    The red is so intense close up.  But if you step 10 feet away, you don't even see it.  Strange how color tricks your eyes.  I had to use only what was in the box of cut up strips.  This forced me to compromise on the lights and darks.  Since a lot of the color is in the mid range the lights and darks are not as clearly defined as I would have wanted, but somehow it all works out.

Blue Diamonds

 This is a picture of Blue Diamonds.  I have been collecting blue japanese fabrics, indigo fabrics, wax batik fabrics with gradations of blue for a while.  I wanted to highlight these beautiful fabrics in a pattern that will show some movement.  The light diamonds were placed on the left diagonal and the dark diamonds on the right diagonal.  These 2 light and 2 dark pieces were pieced together first.  I then cut diamond shapes out of 5 gradation hand dyed fabrics to be placed from the left, right, top and bottom of each light and dark 4 patch.

 The border fabric is a dark blue indigo fabric that I found at Stone Mountain Daughters fabric store.  It was in a plastic bag with a note to keep it stored in the plastic bag.  Such a beautiful blue.  Even though I washed it, I have the feeling the indigo will still bleed.  After taking John Marshalls workshop this past weekend, I am tempted to soak the whole quilt in soy milk.  Hmmm.

This is a closeup of the border quilting that I did.  I used an Aurifil 12 weight blue.  The stencil was cut out of freezer paper.  I traced the pattern on the freezer paper and using my biggest needle, punched holes using the sewing machine.  Then I pounced white chalk on the blue indigo and was able to sew this repeating pattern all around the border.  I used a 90/14 needle. One of my quilting friends said she thought it was hand quilted.  No.  But what a compliment.  The rest of the quilting was done by stitching in a ditch.

There is a lot of movement in this pattern.  Just what I wanted.

This quilt has been given to my Colleen Sato.