Ugly Duckling Fabric

Despite my intentions (or just interest) yesterday to create a large quilt, I fell back into my habit of jumping into whatever struck my fancy at the moment. This may not be a very disciplined way to work, but it sure is fun!

I had carved a circular rubber stamp and was anxious to try it out. I took a bright, less than successfully-painted piece of fabric and stamped acrylic white paint over it. Interesting, but the white didn’t show up as much as I wanted. I then stamped quinacridone magenta, crimson, and nickel azo gold over it.

Before I was through, I had created the UGLIEST piece of fabric I may have ever seen. In fact, it was so ugly I didn’t even take a pic of it, and I’m a compulsive pic-taker.

I started cutting it up and putting the little squares against a black background, and low and behold, it wasn’t so ugly anymore. That will probably be my weekly 6x6” square, so you’ll have to wait to see it when it’s done.

Then I took the same fabric, put fusible on the back, and cut tear/water-droplet shapes from it. I fused those onto hand-dyed fabric to make another spiral piece for Lily Kern’s Fractal Fragments class:

I like this and think I’ll follow up with some thread-painting to “increase the complexity” (part of the fractalness of fractals, I guess).

I used the tiny scraps of leftover cut-out ugly (now not-so-ugly) fabric, along with sheers, Tyvek, and beads, to start my ATCs for a swap (instructions to follow closer to the swap):

And in between all that, I over-dyed my complex cloth project to bring the color down a little and make the whole piece a little more cohesive:

Maybe I should start every day by planning to do something I don’t really want to do; it seems to make me quite productive! (well, that, and staying off of Twitter for stretches at a time).