quilts 3 and 4 for Maastricht

  

Same techniques as the first pair. The series is called -
Environment Dwellers 1- Bird  see previous posting
Environment Dwellers 2 - Frog  see previous posting
Environment Dwellers 3 - Spider
Environment Dwellers 4 - Bees
I am very excited as I used the Speedball  Drawing fluid and the Speedball Filler to make my own screen of the frog and the bees. In fact the screen has two sizes of bee. I need to refine how I apply the filler as with these little home made screens applying the filler was difficult.The mesh is not nearly as taut as a wood framed screen and there is no frame to keep them raised when applying the filler. Hopefully I will refine the process. I am planning to make 2 more so that if hung together they might be large enough to show in some of the quilt shows. The applied fabrics are sun printing. The quilting in all four pieces relates vaguely to the movements followed by the various creatures, eg the bee quilting is lots and lots of intersecting straight lines for their flight paths.
I am just hoping the post works and they get to Wil in time.

2015 images - Irene MacWilliam

As I am a new member of the group here is a little info about me. I live in Northern Ireland.
I have been working with textiles for almost 30 years. Current interests are working with black of white striped fabric to produce optical illusions or producing my own fabric for use in my work. I am a member of both the Northern Ireland Patchwork Guild and the Northern Ireland Embroidery Guild.
The  pieces above are the first 2 of the 4 for Maastricht. I sun printed the applied fabrics - that has been tricky as since I decided to do these pieces we have had virtually no sun; so sometimes fabric had to be rescued from the rain or the printing hardly worked at all. I used a thermofax screen for the birds on the LH piece. For the frogs I made my own screen then put the frog image on it using Speedball drawing ink and Speedball filler- the first time I had tried them. Now that I know how to do it I hope to be able to make better images as I try and perfect the technique.
They are called Environment Dwellers 1- bird and Environment Dwellers 2 - frog. Although only 4 are required I plan to make an additional 2..... if the sun ever shines!