Garden Inspiration Continued

Every few weeks something different is happening in the garden and I just love that. Last week I used the Iris and Rhododendron as inspiration. The Irises are just about done and I had taken a few of my purple ones into the house to enjoy.

 As they were dying off, the flower would drop onto my counter and I noticed that it left a deep purple liquid that was hard to remove if I left it too long before wiping up. I wondered if I could dye fabric with these wilting flowers. I got out some fabric that I had prepared for dying, moistened it and took it outside on my deck where I placed the wilting irises on it and squished them a bit to get the liquid to penetrate the fabric. Then I left it outside to dry.

 I was really happy with the result. The purple from the flowers was quite vibrant and even the green parts of the flower dyed the fabric. This was truly an experiment because I wasn't sure that the dye wouldn't just run completely out of the fabric when I rinsed it under the tap to get the dried plant pieces off of it. To my pleasant surprise, the colour did not rinse out. I then took the fabric and ironed it, hoping it would heat set the colour.

 I was not able to work with it for a few days so I left it sitting in my studio and noticed that some of the colour had faded when I got back to it. I brushed on some fabric medium to help keep the colour that was left and let that dry.

You can see the difference. I still liked the designs the colour made and decided to try to make a small quilt from it. I placed my thick felt underneath it and a piece of backing material and started to just stitch a design to bring out the shapes. At this point I had no idea where I was going with it.

In order to stitch it I use a sewing machine foot called a free-motion foot or a darning foot. I allows me to sew in any direction as opposed to just straight forward or backward.

At this point it looks a bit like and amoeba or outer space. I just kept adding stitching as the piece "spoke" to me.

I used various shades of purple for the stitching and then decided to bring some darker and more heavily thread sketched areas into it. It now has some flower like qualities to it. This is as far as I got today but I will keep on adding stitches to bring a focal point into play.