Time Capsule Story Quilts (Shie)
Instructor: Susan Shie
Supply List
FABRIC:
Painting surface: white Kona cotton, PFD (prepared for dyeing) Bring at least 2 yards for a four day class. If you can’t find PDF Kona, then buy some white, medium weight, 100% cotton fabric, and wash it before bringing it. You’ll need to iron it well, to get the wrinkles out.
Backing fabrics: Bring some backing fabrics that please you: woven cottons, in a few one yard pieces. You’ll need to decide what goes with the painting you plan to quilt in the class. The backing fabric will fold around and become the little border around the painting. Light patterns, mottled batiks, soft color changes are good for this kind of backing use. You may want to write on the fabric, where it becomes the front border, so you don’t want dark backing fabrics or strong prints.
MARKERS:
Rub-a-Dub laundry markers. Bring at least 3 new ones. Found at big office supply stores, sometimes in dept. store school supply sections. Google them, and don’t wait til you have to pay speed shipping! (Amazon sells them, for instance, and takes a long time to get them to you.) Several people may want to go together to buy in bulk. Rub-a-Dubs are made by Sharpie, but they’re not the same thing as regular Sharpies, which can leach an acid stain onto your work over time. Rub-a-Dubs are safe on fabrics, as they were designed as a laundry marker.
COLOR MARKERS and SKETCHBOOK:
Bring a set of children’s cheap, fine line washable markers (12 marker set or bigger), and a cheap sketchbook for taking notes and drawing your ideas out. Crayola makes a very nice 50-marker set, but you don’t NEED that many colors. You may just WANT them! The sketchbook should be at least 8.5 x 11″, regular white drawing paper.
PAINTS:
Jacquard Textile Colors fabric paints. Buy the 2.25 oz bottles. Buy yellow, goldenrod, orange, true red, emerald green, olive green, sky blue, periwinkle, violet, black, and colorless extender. Two bottles of yellow and two of extender would be good, as they go down so fast. You can buy extra colors if you like, and you can buy other brands of fabric paint. Just make sure they’re not inks, not silk paints, and not opaque paints. You want transparent or translucent fabric paints. Order your paints well ahead, from Dharma Trading Co, Jerry’s Artorama, or Dick Blick. They’re often out of some of the colors you’ll want when you order, so order early!
BRUSHES:
Flat tipped boar bristle, long handled brushes called brites, made for painting with acrylics or oils, are the best for our work with fabric. One-fourth inch to one inch wide tips. Watercolor brushes won’t work, as you need very stiff brushes to push the paint into the cloth. I will bring all the brushes for class, since everyone has a hard time figuring out which brushes I mean. Don’t buy them now.
DROPCLOTHS:
Bring several old white or light colored sheets. Or clean, ungessoed canvas, if you have some (it’s like very heavy unbleached muslin). This is used for laying under the painting as it’s made, so the wetness will go into the dropcloth, rather than sitting on plastic and keeping the painting from drying. If you have lots, you can move your wet painting to a dry dropcloth, so the painting will dry faster. The dropcloth also keeps your paint from bleeding too much, so be sure to bring plenty of cloth for this.
OTHER PAINTING SUPPLIES:
Some clean old fabric for paint rags; a white plastic plate and cup for your palette and paint water holder; a couple of big GARBAGE BAGS, to lay flat under your dropcloth, to protect the table from our wet painting processes. You may want to bring a work apron.
BATTING:
I use bamboo/cotton batting by Fairfield Processing, and highly recommend it. Second choice is Warm and White or Warm and Natural. Bring a crib size batt or at least enough to do one of your paintings, figuring in that the batt goes all the way out into the full border. Crib sized batting would be the best idea.
MACHINE THREADS:
Bring several spools of threads that you like for quilting. Just regular stuff. Variegated threads are beautiful. Plain colors are fine, too. I like light colors, myself, as they don’t conflict visually with my black tiny writing. I prefer cotton thread.
SEWING MACHINE:
Bring yours if it’s easy to transport. Two of you can share one sewing machine. The machine doesn’t have to do anything but straight stitch, but should be in very good working order. It’s best if your machine has a walking foot, which keeps the layers from sliding apart as you sew a quilt. Bring your machine’s tools, a power strip, and/or extension cord for your machine.
PINS:
Bring a pincushion with long quilting pins in it, for basting your border to the painting.
SAFETY PINS:
Bring boomerang shaped bent safety pins, about an inch long, for basting the body of the quilt sandwich.
SCISSORS:
Bring sharp sewing shears, as well as sharp little scissors for cutting threads while quilting.
OPTIONAL:
Bring a tabletop work light, your camera, a few pix to show us of your work, studio, home, and family, a couple of examples of your work, and some music CDs you feel will be good for nice background music in class. We keep the music very soft, but it’s nice to have it.
YOUR FEE TO ME: I will charge you a small fee for use of my brushes and airpens and the black paint that we use in them, as well as anything you didn’t bring and got from me instead. This will be a very small charge, usually between $5 and $20, and I’ll have YOU decide how much you owe me, compared to others’ usage. I always want my students to feel good about their supply fees.
I WILL BRING:
2 airpens and all of their equipment. Black fabric paint for use with the airpens. Brushes for everyone to use for painting with fabric paint. Two respirators for volunteers and me to use for heatsetting the paints. Examples of my work.