Watercolor on Fabrics..

This piece is my first effort from a class on watercolor paints on fabric. Quilting teacher Debra Johnston held a trial class at her home with just three students. Debra has an art background and she provided all the necessary items... watercolor crayons, markers, pencils, and paints. That meant we could try the various methods without buying lots of supplies.

We began with a landscape-style photo or picture and a piece of bleached muslin. Mine is a courtyard in St. Augustine. After creating a black-and-white photocopy version, we traced the major elements from the picture onto the muslin. Then we filled them in using watecolor paints, and added details with watercolor markers. After heat setting the image, it's now ready to incorporate in a crazy quilt block, or other project.

It was so much fun, that we decided to schedule a special event for our quilt guild, The Country Road Quilters. So next week, she and I will "hostess" a One-Day Get-Away at The Ice House, a beautiful new classroom at The Suwannee Valley Quilt Shop in Trenton, FL. We'll have the watercolor class and a luncheon at the cafe for 12 participants.



Debra is the brains and talent behind this event, so I'm helping out with the lunch arrangements, preparing the fabrics, and other details. I stitched these mini-notepads to put in the class packets along with a brush and muslin pieces. To make them, I cut dollar-store paper to size, and then added the fabric strips as toppers. It was a chance to try out a few of the fancy machine stitches and to use up some fabric scraps. These were strips cut from interfaced fabric leftover from the Jane Sassaman class and project.

Should be a fun day. I'll get pictures to share.