After pinning up the large swaths of blues I had dyed by hand, I felt overwhelmed and under inspired. But why? I love the ocean, and I had been able to dye a blue that I liked, ready to make another ocean quilt. It was just too much fabric to think about. In my stash I had some smaller pieces of cotton batting. A very decent sized piece to work with. I would venture in.
I began tearing up some of the newly dyed cloth, ironic since I have bags and bags of scraps, but not scraps the color I wanted to use (isn't it always the case?). I laid out the strips on the batting, but then added layers of full cloth front and back to sandwich the fuzziness. Strips went on top, laid out in a gradation. Not enough. Strips from a bought fabric of a world map were added, some letterpress printed pieces of silk organza I had printed for a previous project added kelp color, and I knew I would use the leftover pieces of gel medium newspaper transfer from Broken News for this one. Finally, I stenciled the word “breaking” in white, the commercial stencils reminding me of the typography on a boat’s life jackets and other gear.
Not wanting to attempt the time-consuming task of pinning or basting before quilting, I misted the composition, then smooth a piece of [Amazon Associates link] Sulky Ultra Solvy over it. Now I could quilt and the pieces would pretty much hold together. The Ultra Solvy dissolves in water, so I rinsed it out, then let the quilt air dry, as the directions suggest. Then I bound it with a lightweight white cotton.
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