A sensuous curve too far

Now for a free motion quilting interlude - which is another way of saying that I could never stick to one thing at a time. Somehow the ideas in my head queueing up to get out are too impatient to wait their turn. Impatience is great for creativity but not too good for finishing things in a hurry! I usually have several things on the go at once.

Time for a bit of procion paper play

Procion paper play is all about thickening up some procion dyes with manutex and printing, rolling, painting, dribbling, splashing them about on paper. Anything goes really. It is a great way to explore, experiment and play with no goal in mind - just discover what come out.

Bottles are a gift for quilters - all those sensuous curves. I've been meaning to explore exploiting them for ages. A clear out had left me with a pile of old folder dividers and I decided I could up-cycle these into masks and stencils. I perfect opportunity to make something for nothing and feel virtuous about reducing my rubbish. The idea - gleaned from an article on making stencils - was to paint them in acrylic to make them waterproof. I expected them to curl up when the first side was painted. I expected them - as per article - to lie flat again when I painted the reverse side. Not so. My stencils, not having read the article, decided to corkscrew. I know that I wanted sensuous curves, but that was taking things too far!

It was also quite time consuming, messy and used up a lot of acrylic paint - and probably cost a lot more than simply cutting them out of acetate. Ah well - I tried.

Here are the un-corkscrewed stencils, weighed down by stones to keep them flat...

stencils made from painted dividers - weighed down to stop corkscrewing

and the masks.

masks made out of old dividers, waterproofed with acrylic paint

This first one uses a couple of the masks and stencils, apply the dye with a sponge roller. Sponge rollers are very dye hungry and soak up a lot of dye-paint, but I do like the texture they give.

Procion paper play - bottle masks and stencils

detail

For this one I've limited myself to just one bottle shape. It's done with a brayer, which gives a totally different texture. It looks thicker, glopier, much more messy, but therefore there is more textural interest. I used electic blue and mustard yellow, which I think give a lovely colour combination. Areas under the mask were of course white, and I've gone over these with lemon yellow.

Blue and yellow bottle procion paper play

Blue and yellow bottles - detail

The last two from this session are cheerfully chuby. Again the sencil and mask give the postive and negative shape. I've used the sponge roller again and given a bit of extra colour with a light rolloing of magenta. I might give it a colour wash at some stage to colour in the white.

Cheerfully chubby bottles in yellows and organges with a bit of magenta

Detail

Back to the quilting next.

Thanks for dropping by.