Sunday, June 21, 2009

Marbling - Okay Now What Do I Do With All of This?

This is the question of the day. I probably have 40 yards in fat quarters of marbled fabrics now. No, I am not going to give it away YET!! So far I have been using it like I would use commercial fabric. It has made great background fabric in my pelican and Birds of Paradise quilts and I have used it in one of my jackets as well. The biggest problem with most of it is that it reads as a background fabric so it will be difficult to highlight it except for cutting out smaller pieces of it that read as small compositions. Maybe combining strips with some hand dyed fabrics to break up some of the busyness of the marbled fabrics? These more organic marbled fabrics do solve one of the problems of the highly stylized marbled fabrics where the pattern glares out at you when you mix it with others (like most highly geometric prints).

So if you have any ideas, let me know.....

We had a LOT of rain and one of the dreariest days in recent memory but I just put up a laundry rack in the basement and had at it. These two were both redish purples underneath and I used lots of yellows and reds on top with a little purple thrown in for good luck. I like them!




This was the last of my ultimate ugly dyed and discharged.



This was on a lavender base.

This was also on a lavender base but concentrated on blues and lavenders here.

Again on a blue/lavender base.

This last one was my favorite. It was done on a relatively attractive scrap of dark green/blue that I had. I think the picture looks better than the fabric but I do like the fabric! Too bad I don't have more!
My guess is I won't get a whole lot done today as I left my bedroom door open as my cat George was snuffly and wanted to be with me. Big mistake as his brother thinks 1 and 6 in the morning are great times to cavort across, over and jump continuously when he isn't eating my fingers or purring in my ear. I finally gave up and got up at 6:30!! It falls into the category of "it seemed like a good idea at the time".

5 comments:

Vicki W said...

Time to set up an etsy shop!

Nina Marie said...

Beth - I agree with Vicki - you could always sell it! Your fabrics are lovely - so many possibilities!

Beth Brandkamp said...

Well,I used to sell quite a bit of my hand dyes but found I really wanted to use them myself! I really want to find an artistic/creative way to use them! I may think about selling later on!

Beth Brandkamp said...

Well,I used to sell quite a bit of my hand dyes but found I really wanted to use them myself! I really want to find an artistic/creative way to use them! I may think about selling later on!

Pat Pauly said...

Time for some new direction to use those great marbled pieces. I would say it is time to "cut up the pretties". Be glad to point the way...

Pat