Inspiration by accident

I usually work in bright colors, but the piece I'm finishing right now is a little different, soft and monochrome, all because of some leftover paint.

Underwater piece in progress

A couple of weeks ago I was painting some fabric, using Setacolor and Dye-na-flo paints, and decided to try a version of snow dyeing, using the Dye-na-flo. Since we don't get snow here, I used a blender to chop ice for the "snow." I'd prepared a bucket with a couple of spacers and a can lid to leave room for the melting ice, then put in my fabric and the snow, then sprinkled with paint.

The melting colors looked beautiful, but when dry, the fabric turned out to be very light colored. Pretty, but not what I've seen from snow-dyeing with regular dye. It was an experiment, so no great concern.

I would probably have set the fabric aside with my other painted fabrics, if it hadn't been for the leftover paint/water mixture. It was a very pretty teal color and I hated to just dump it down the sink, so I grabbed some scraps of cotton quilt batting, and some cotton yarn and crochet thread, and dropped them in to soak for a while.

"snow" with paint

after the snow melted

The result was a very light green or blue green, depending on the material, and made me think of underwater scenes. They combined really well with the light blue fabric from the original snow painting experiment, for a couple of dreamy underwater scenes. They are not quite finished, so it's time for me to get off the computer and back into the studio to finish up. We have an art show next weekend and I have a couple of pieces to finish and frame.

And for my friends looking for more art quilt inspiration, check out this blog.

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

More later!

finished piece of fabric

leftover paint/water with cotton batting

dyed batting and yarn