Indigo Impression

     Now that I'm working slow for a bit, I'm taking an on-line class from Jude Hill at her site, Spirit Cloth. The class I'm taking is Spirit Cloth 101. It's all hand stitching and basically about making a sampler and I'm really enjoying it. I spent several days just reading through the posts on the class and watching the videos. Then I spent a week just thinking about what my theme would be for my sampler. And then it came to me. No surprise if you're a reader of my blog... Rocks. And Blue.
     I went through my bin of blue fabrics and found two pieces of indigo cotton that I had dyed with my ArtsEtc group many years ago and had only used a small portion of. I treasured this fabric and this project would be perfect for it. I found some commercial fabrics that went well with it and some oranges that would be good accents. Here are some fabrics that may get used.

Indigo with possible accent fabrics

     Then I monoprinted some fabrics in various grays in rock textures using a procedure I developed
to mimic having a moldy gelatin plate using a permanent gelatin plate. You can visit this older post to see the procedure here.
     Here's a photo of the fabrics I monoprinted.

Monoprints sitting on Marcia Derse fabric with
a previously painted rock on top

     Finally, I got busy and actually hand-pieced a nine patch. As I was sewing, I was thinking that I could machine stitch it so much faster. But then I would be missing out on the idea of spirit cloth so I got into the rhythm of the stitch and it went well. The next step was to do an invisible baste onto a thin cloth instead of batting to stabilize it and get it ready for the appliqué step to come.

Nine-patch basted onto its stabilizing cloth

     I have several ideas floating in my head of how to place the rocks, what accents to add, what to embroider, etc. But these things change one by one as the pieces get added and I see how one thing affects another. I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments on their posts to let them know you stopped by.