Block Printed & Stitched: Peacock FANdango

"When one door closes, another opens."
-Alexander Graham Bell

There has been an art call that has intrigued me for 3+ years. And each year I would talk myself out of applying thinking that my work wasn't strong enough or I wouldn't have the time to create the pieces required. This year I gathered the courage to submit a proposal project. I was proud of myself and was only slightly disappointed when I got the rejection letter. In some ways I was slightly relieved as it would require an intense time commitment to complete 50 small pieces in 50 days. Instead of dwelling on this rejection, I started my first block printed & stitched piece, Peace & Parcheesi, which was so enjoyable to create that I have now finished my fourth piece in this series. This new finish is a mandala design, which interestingly would have been the theme of the 50 pieces I had initially proposed. So where one door closes, another opens and I was able go bigger and enjoy every step of this journey!

Join me as I share my process for creating this meditative mandala design...

Several squares of white Evolon non-woven fiber were faux dyed with ProChem Pro Silk & Fabric paints. The Evolon takes up the paint beautifully and once they are laid out flat in the sun, they dry within an hour or so and have a slightly mottled texture.

It took me nearly 3 weeks to start the block printing as I just kept putting it off mostly out of fear. It has been almost a year since I last block printed mandalas for Mind Over MATter, and they came so effortlessly that I worried it was a fluke. And so I kept bumping it off my daily to do list. I warmed up to the idea by pulling out all my hand-carved block prints that might work--several of which are newer additions. I confess that I was tempted to recreate some of the earlier block printed mandalas to help me get started, but I really wanted to explore new mandala designs. And so I finally gathered the courage, set up my space, hit record, and just got started auditioning various block prints within a mandala design, working my way out from the center. You can watch the time-lapsed videos here and here as I block printed 6 mandalas in one evening! Yes, once I got started it was hard to stop as I was enjoying the creative flow!

Now I had the daunting task of choosing which of these block printed mandalas to stitch first! They were all fused onto a layer of batting giving me some time to stall while getting better acquainted with each of the designs. The red mandala was chosen as there were several patterns and shapes that I thought would be fun to stitch. Using a coordinating Superior Red Metallic 40wt thread,

Minimal free-motion quilting to outline some of the larger block printed elements, leaving lots of space for hand embroidery! While choosing embroidery threads, I envisioned a color gradient out from the center. Initially I chose almost a full rainbow of pastel colors flowing from pink, peach, light yellow flowing into teal. I absolutely loved how the teal thread popped against the red background and so I pulled another thread palette ranging from white and a very pale teal to darker teals, still honoring the gradient vision.

Both were lovely options and since both started with white in the center, I started there and mulled over my options. It didn't take me long to decide to go with the teal colorway! Each day I would add stitching to one or more rings using a combination of Wonderfil 8wt Eleganza perle cotton and Aurifil 28 wt threads.

My plan was to trim away some of the excess red background but since the edges were very irregular I opted to finish as a circle. A Stanley Fatmax Chisel Compass was used to lightly mark a circle perimeter. A dense zig zag was free-motion stitched back and forth to fill in the space between the outer ring and the marked circle. After stitching two inches, I wasn't feeling very confident about it, but there was no turning back now, so I kept stitching. As I worked my way around the circle, I felt better about it. More silver and teal sequins were chosen to add some bling along the perimeter. After stitching halfway around, I realized there was too much bling (I never thought I would utter such words!) And so the stitching was removed and I replaced it with sequins only at the end of the ogee shape and then colonial knots in the smaller circles...but then I determined the thread was too dark. So I removed the stitching one more time and went with a lighter thread which lightened up the edges.

It's always a bittersweet moment when the stitching phase is complete. Here is the front and backsides of all the quilting on this small piece.

Imagine my delight when I found the perfect print to use as a backing!

The stitched quilt top was layered and fused with Pellon's 70 Peltex® Sew-In Ultra Firm Stabilizer and backing print before completing two passes of ropstitching around the perimeter. Trimming away the excess background was much easier than scalloped borders, but I still took it slow to trim close to the stitched perimeter. The edges were then painted with a coordinating Bright Teal Tulip Puffy Paint/Dimensional Fabric Paint adding a subtle pop.