painted silk on the dock

Over the weekend, April joined us at the cottage. She brought her own silk fabric and setacolour paint and her wonderful energy. She wanted to paint a backing for the quilt she made in May. I brought foam brushes and my Mickey Lawler book and just watched her. She told me that she read a blog post of mine 6 or so times. She painted into the long evening and then left it to dry overnight. It's important to make soft pleats in the cloth when it is wet, and allow it to dry slowly. The technique responds to nature, air, light, the moisture in the cloth, and how the colours mix or don't. It's magical how the fabric wicks and everything changes. April got up early the next morning to see what happened. There were some areas that she was thrilled with, and others not so much. She fiddled with the latter for a while. She made two lengths of fabric, and late the next day pieced them together to make a quilt back approximately 70" x 80".