Carol R. Eaton Designs

Carol R. Eaton Designs

FABRIC FOR SALE: click on pages below!

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Combining Needle Felting with Quilting

The piece below is titled "Friday Afternoon" becasue it's a fantasy place my hubby and I would like to be each Friday as the work week winds down.

I love needle felting and I love quilting so combining the two techniques seemed like fun! I wanted to design a piece that worked with perspective and adjusting the basic Attic Window pattern helped create a feeling of looking into the horizon. The fabric I chose is from my hand dyed collection.

I knew I wanted to use needle felting for the bulk of the design and dyed wool roving specifically for this project. I didn't want any seams showing in the needle felting so I first created a border of batting that I could add the roving directly onto without the seam showing.

I'm partial to including aderondack chairs in my desgins beacue they represent unconditonal relaxing to me. I wove flax to create the beach basket and the towels are a piece of fabric I made using flour/water paste.... squiggly lines and spray paint - yah, I was totaly playing with that one!

When it came to quilting I let the design tell me where to stitch.



Friday, June 17, 2011

Fun with Fabric Manipulation

I gathered with my fellow fiber buddies for a day of dyeing fabrics and manipulating the color of fabrics using the discharge method. Everyone had a different approach and the end results were as unique as each of us!

I created a piece using "Softscrub" as the discharge agent and bubble wrap, stencils and old netting - nothing but the best for this project! Once the fabric was cleaned up it kind of appealed to me so I started playing with it. The end results are below.

I call this "Awakening" because it was so much fun to take average found objects and use them differently than their intended use. It truly awakened a spirit of adventure and excitement to keep trying new things and approach projects in a non traditional manner.


Below is a detail of the embroidery I added to highlight the Cali Lily. There are other embellishments of tube beads and iridescent beads from an old necklace my mother gave me (she gave it to me to use in my art... I didn't cut up a necklace she gave as a gift - I felt I should clarify!).