an experiment

I am going to start a new quilt soon. While I am working out the design I have been trying to figure out what techniques to use to make it. I want a dark probably black background on this next quilt,so I debated if I should paint the background or dye it or paint on dark fabric. After making Primordial Sea I was not sure I wanted to do that again. So this is my experiment to see what would happen if I painted white fabric with textile paints and then dyed it. I thought two things might happen. One- the paint might not hold up to the abuse of dyeing and washing out in HOT water, or two- the cloth behind the painted areas would also take the dye and make the image dark.

This fish went through dye and washout twice and I am pretty impressed with how well the paint held up. I do not like how the image itself became dark from the dye taking to the back of the painted area though. The metallic paints do reflect light and at some angles looks good, others it looks dark. The other problem with this method is that occassionally a drop of paint may fall on the background (below tail) and cause all sorts of grief. So this will not be the method I use. When the background was a lighter shade, it did look really good. So this method would work if you wanted a light to medium colored background.

I also tried painting with opaque paints on black cloth but the coverage was not that good, it looked dull. So I will be painting this next quilt completely on white cloth. But first I need to try to finish this agave which is not thrilling me at all. I just want it done.