Thursday, September 8, 2016

More Mandalas -- Like Marbling in the Past, I Can't Stop!!

This was how I ultimately decided to finish this wall hanging.  It is now about 42 x 42 inches.  I wanted the mandala fabric to stand out.  The final border is one of the "drop" cloths I used in the dyeing and it certainly matches perfectly.

I couldn't help myself with making mandalas and this batch was the biggest surprise of all!!  I didn't use any drop cloths underneath and I literally did not know the fiber content of any of the fabric -- I knew they were 100% cotton but some were pfd, some were pfd mercerised (the best for color) and some were just plain old cotton.  I literally scrunched them randomly on three grates, piling them willy-nilly.  Altogether, there were 21 twenty-two inch squares and 3 eleven inch squares (to see if that would work).  I also did 2 plus size t-shirts.  I worked with the greens, sun yellow, intense blue and grape as well as some strong orange for a change of pace.  I won't even attempt to label all the mandalas I have pictured here.  If you look carefully, you can see the differences in fabrics by how much paler and fuzzier the designs are -- these were the muslin pieces I had.




















These are the three smaller pieces which I grouped together.  I will definitely be doing more of these!!  This was pfd fabric that was not mercerised.

1 comment:

Sue said...

Thanks for the advice. I'm not giving up. I'm happy that even two came out ok since I thought they were all fails!