Even More Eclipse-Inspired Quilts, with No-Bleach Discharge

It's nine months since the one-in-a-lifetime lunar eclipse last August, 2017, and since then, I've made a bunch of eclipse-inspired quilts, here and here. Below is number #3, a small piece measuring 6.5" x 8.5", all batiks, with 1" squares as the background....

Number 4, at 15" x 22", more batiks...

...For added atmospherics, I threw on some sparkly gold tulle...

...and purple netting from a vegetable bag....

Finally, #5, the piece I wanted to make from the beginning, 

It measures 12.5" x 7", and was inspired by the photo my friend Anne took of an Atlanta sidewalk during the eclipse. 

At a glance the photo shows sun shining through leaves, but at a second glance, you see the sunlight is shaped like tiny moons. To interpret the scene, I used a process called "discharge," similar to bleaching - removing dye from colored fabric  - with a product called deColourant* which is safer than bleach, for fibers and for people. 

I began by sewing together strips of brown and purple batiks to serve as the background. With an x-acto knife, I cut tiny moons from freezer paper. Ironed that stencil onto the patchwork, and applied two kinds* of deCoulerant - one that removes the dye, leaving white moons, and another that removes and replaces the dye with gold. 

I moved the stencil several times, after waiting for it to dry between applications, to cover the whole piece.

 Once dry,  I  pressed everything with a hot iron, which triggers the dye removal.

 Peeled back the freezer paper, washed out the fabric, and let it dry.

 Just for fun, I added leaves, flower petals, and an eclipse.

I laid the top onto batting and backing fabric (the purple-and-white batik you can see along the bottom and right), and strewed the leaves and petals about. With a temporary glue stick, I swiped some of them and stuck them in place.

 ...Then carefully laid a piece of dark purple tulle on top and freemotion quilted around the moons, leaves and petals.

I cut the three layers even, and satin-stitched around the perimeter a couple of times with purple thread. A purple marker took care of remaining white bits.

 And there it is, all done! It has a nice sculptural look around all the internal shapes. I think I'm finished making eclipse quilts, but you never know!

*The deColourant product recently changed ownership and formulation. The plain and metallic gold versions I used for this quilt are no longer available. Learn about the new products here, or for an informative PDF, click on: "deColourant and deColourant Mist FAQs". 

Eclipse-o-mania: Cosmic Uses for Batik Scraps

Guess what, there's another eclipse tonight! I'm not kidding - scroll to the end of this article.

Inspired by this past August's solar eclipse, and the NASA #EclipseArtQuilt challenge, I aimed to make a quilt that would inspire quiet reverence for a natural phenomenon. Instead, I wound up with a batik tailgate party. Afterwards, extra batik and batik-esque circles and crescents were strewn about my cutting table, coffee table, ironing board, sewing room floor, kitchen floor, purse, socks, but not my hair. Dramatic recreation:

So I picked them up, dusted them off, and started arranging them on a blue background.

And, to make a long story short, I made the following. It's called, "There's Always an Eclipse Somewhere."

How do we love batiks? Let us count the ways! They're full of irregularities that give them an extra-terrestrial look. Especially batiks that are so splotchy that you don't know what else to do with them - they make terrific astronomical and astrogeological phenomena. Sunspots, craters, crevasses...

...atmospheric anomolies...

...purple mountain's majesty and amber waves of grain (oh wait, that's America)...

...shining seas...

...valleys rings, dorsa, promontorium...



... single-cell seeds of life, seas, arachnoids, domes...

\


...lava tubes, dark matter...

...channels and canals (built by mother nature or ET)...

(That yellow globe above is a bit of hand-painted fabric with experimental smears, arguably from brush cleaning.) It's so much fun to find strange parts you would otherwise discard, and cut planets around them. I stuck everything down lightly with a glue stick.

Then considered whether to throw a tulle net on top. Tulle can soften/hide edges of raw edge applique, and the hue can change the look of the quilt in unexpected ways. If you freemotion quilt on top of tulle (instead of directly on the cutouts), there's less concern about loose edges causing tangles and creases.

Let the testing begin. Black tulle:

Purple tulle: 

A vintage red organza scarf, full of runs:

The tests made me decide not to use tulle at all. That meant more pressure to do a neat zigzag around each shape. Used either matching or variegated rayon threads. I ignored the pressure and did a non-neat zigzag. 

By the time I finished the machine applique, it was already 5 pm, and I have a rule: Never FMQ (freemotion quilt) after 5, except in case of emergency potholder. From dusk forward, I make lousy decisions, monotonous dinners, and my handwriting decays worse than usual. FMQ is all about excellent handwriting. 

But I do let myself PRACTICE after 5 pm. I started out on paper. My first idea was freemotion sky motifs. 

Second, I tried freehanding five-pointed stars inside pentagons....

I liked that, so I tried it on dressmaker's tracing paper, using a watercolor marker (for easy removal in case ink leached through, which it didn't.) In process: 

....And after removing the quilt: 

Waaaaaayyy too fussy and small.  Need something simpler. 

Better. The next morning, I did a bit more pencil practice, then stitching practice, and finally, I went for it. 

 I like that it looks like "low poly" designs. I did a rolled-edge facing (favorite tutorial), and called it done!

When's the next big eclipse? TONIGHT! I learned in this morning's New York Times that a type of eclipse called a "lunar occultation" - the moon hiding planets and stars  - will take place from the evening of September 17, 2017, through tomorrow evening.  (Yes, the August  21 eclipse was also a lunar occulation.)

Depending on where you're located, the moon will briefly hide Venus, Mars and Mercury, and maybe Regulus, the brightest star in the Leo constellation. Read all about it in the New York Times here.  And then get out your batik scraps!

UPDATE: Amazing NASA images from Saturn/the Cassini mission are here. They're also crying out for a batik interpretation!

Look, Up in the Sky! Eclipse? Fruit Cocktail?

For the NASA eclipse art challenge, discussed in my last two posts (1,2) I planned to do something serious and dignified, in keeping with cosmic awe, science, wonder and all that. Inspired by austere NASA photography, it would probably involve discharge (chemically removing dye) from black fabric, which creates this kind of a mood...

...(from a years-old stamping-discharge experiment stuffed into my stash), except less wrinkly.

But a funny thing happened on the way to austere dignity, and I wound up making this:

It all started when I started to create the patchwork background, inspired by my friend Anne's photos of the eclipse reflected through tree leaves on tiled Atlanta sidewalks, which I showed last week.

I figured I would discharge the moon shapes onto a pieced sidewalk. But blacks and greys seemed too dull. Instead, I cut shadowy brown and purple batiks into 1 1/2" strips. I also cut strips of used packing paper to 2 1/2" x about 15". (Never throw away packing paper - it's also great for drafting freemotion quilting designs). Pieced the fabric strips on the paper at an angle - half had the strips going from upper left to lower right, and the other half with the strips going the other way. In process, it looks like this: 

 Cut off the tails.

 I wound up making five.

Stitched the rows together. (I wanted it rectangular, like a sidewalk, so I only used four).

 Then tore out the paper. The background was done.

Time to bring in the moody moons.  That would require rummaging through my craft supply closet to locate my jar of preferred discharge agent, Decoulerant. (no financial affiliation). But I happened to be at my cutting board, where there were some batting scraps. Just for fun, I cut some crescents and strewed them on.

Below is the next photograph in my camera. I'm not sure what happened between these two photos. Maybe I blacked out. Or maybe there was another eclipse. When I awoke, I'd done this:

OK, I didn't black out, there was some logic that got me pulling colorful scraps from my batik scrap bag and raucously cutting them into moons, planets, telescopes, eyewear, sidewalk leaves, etc.

I viewed the eclipse from the Caltech campus in Pasadena, CA, where my husband works. It didn't get very dark, so, at least as impressive as the teeny waxing and waning crescent in the sky was how it drew people together, joyfully grooving on the vibe. In 1967, when I was 10, I went with my parents to a Be-In in Central Park. The eclipse was like the Be In, but without the cannabis, protest, or big hair. People were getting high on astronomy.

So, dang the cosmos, I let myself quilt a colorful celebration. 

After looking at what I'd made for about ten seconds, I was a little bummed to realize that my crescent suns look just like bananas. 

I can't think of a cure for that. (Ideas welcomed.)

On further reflection, one might argue that there are also maraschino cherries and grapes.

Oh well. I added batting and backing, and freemotion stitched everything down. I hand-embroidered the location and date on the telescopes. 

I do still have one extra strip - maybe I'll try some serious bleach discharge on it.  

Or maybe I'll just throw on some more bananas. 

 You have until September 15, 2017 to complete your eclipse-inspired art work, take a picture and upload it to social media using the hashtag #EclipseArtQuilt.  There's no judge, no jury, no voting, just sharing!  It's a cyber-Be-In. 

• To learn more about the Eclipse Art Quilt project, go go.nasa.gov/2qoqTis.
• To see pieces that have already been posted (including fiber art pieces), use the #EclipseArtQuilt hashtag in a social media search engine, especially Twitter and Facebook. 
• Machine quilting guru Leah Day has a tutorial for making her cutaway eclipse applique pattern, here. 
• And here's a gorgeous, serene video of the event, with a lots of people oooohing and aaaaahing in various languages.