laundry room queen
Author Archives: planting
i don’t recall what initially moved me to make it only that i began experimenting with different dyeing techniques, using cold water dyes on unbleached cotton i tie dyed, moved on to shibori and then over dyeing and then stenciling and discharging. after i had a pretty good collection of luscious colors, i began tearing them into strips of various widths and lengths,sewing those together cutting them again at random then laying them out on the floor in my bedroom. i didn’t have any design or theme or pattern in mind i was just captivated by the color and feel of these fabrics and it became a puzzle to work through,one of my favorite pastimes.
then the stitching began. i started with stitching an outline around the figures before i started the little circles.
i don’t recall how long it took but looking at it now it seems it had to have taken a hundred years! all those tiny little stitches! again it wasn’t planned but done on the fly, starting anywhere, sticking my needle through and stitching outward in a spiral until i got tired of it moving onto another spot from which to begin another spiral until they all “met up” with each other. there are a couple of spots where i didn’t spiral probably when i thought i’d had enough but i didn’t do very much of that i always returned to the spiral.
i went on and did a series of quilts with these fabrics but this one remains my favorite and always hangs somewhere in the house.
i don’t recall what initially moved me to make it only that i began experimenting with different dyeing techniques, using cold water dyes on unbleached cotton i tie dyed, moved on to shibori and then over dyeing and then stenciling and discharging. after i had a pretty good collection of luscious colors, i began tearing them into strips of various widths and lengths,sewing those together cutting them again at random then laying them out on the floor in my bedroom. i didn’t have any design or theme or pattern in mind i was just captivated by the color and feel of these fabrics and it became a puzzle to work through,one of my favorite pastimes.
then the stitching began. i started with stitching an outline around the figures before i started the little circles.
i don’t recall how long it took but looking at it now it seems it had to have taken a hundred years! all those tiny little stitches! again it wasn’t planned but done on the fly, starting anywhere, sticking my needle through and stitching outward in a spiral until i got tired of it moving onto another spot from which to begin another spiral until they all “met up” with each other. there are a couple of spots where i didn’t spiral probably when i thought i’d had enough but i didn’t do very much of that i always returned to the spiral.
i went on and did a series of quilts with these fabrics but this one remains my favorite and always hangs somewhere in the house.









