Spring by Laura West Kong
A quilt for Earth Day! Spring was made using the Waxmelter Batik Pen, a fun and green way to use up broken crayon bits. (You wouldn’t want those broken crayons to go to waste, now would you?)
Broken crayons go in the top …
(This is the Waxmelter Batik Pen)
…melted wax comes out the bottom.
Color inside the wax-outlined shapes with thin, flowing paints such as watered-down acrylics, silk fabric paint, etc. or dip it into some cold-water fabric dye. The crayon wax acts like a resist to keep the paint where it belongs.
After the fabric dries you can remove the wax by ironing the fabric between sheets of newsprint or paper towels. The heat of the iron melts the wax and the paper soaks it up. The colored lines stay behind! Or if you’re not going to wash it, you can leave the wax right where it is. The wax lines give a neat dimensional element for an art quilt. You can melt regular batik wax, too. I’ve also decorated Easter eggs with my batik pen. Find out more about the Waxmelter Batik Pen and other wax melting tools at the Wax Melting Tools by Twisteez Wire website.
About Crayons
You probably don’t want to use those free restaurant crayons in your batik pen. Some of them got mixed up in my broken crayon box. See the difference below:
Notice the blue and green lines on the left. See the clear areas in the lines and lack of complete color coverage? That because cheap crayons don’t have as much pigment as better quality crayons do. Good crayons have more pigment and will give you bright, clear colors on paper as well as on fabric. The batik pen is easier to use with good crayons too. Sometimes the cheap crayon wax is really thin when melted and can flood out of the tip. The red and blue lines on the right probably didn’t come from children’s menu crayons. If I were to remove the wax off the samples above, the one on the left would certainly leave a greasy stain behind.
If you want some really fabulous crayons, try Prang Soy Crayons. The paraffin wax in regular crayons comes from petroleum, these are made from soy. They’re environmentally friendly, that’s why I’m telling you about them on Earth Day. But that’s not why I LOVE them … I love them because they are smooth, rich, and vibrant. They’re creamy and blend-able without a waxy buildup. I use mine for those cute vintage-y picture quilts that are hand embroidered with a stem stitch and then colored in the lines with crayons.
My Crayon Kitty. I should really finish up the rest of these blocks. Maybe I’ll make that my Earth Day project!
Share your comments or Earth Day projects!
More Eco-Posts!
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Muse Monday: Quilt A Memory
Bottle Cap Pincushion
Quilt Green 2009
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Did you resolve to make or finish more quilts in the new year? Think you can do it in just 10 minutes a day?
Today’s tip is simple, but important: stitch, breathe, repeat.
Try it yourself and see. About 9-10 steady, even breaths per minute works best for me for both slow and quick machine stitching.
When you’re not baking in the kitchen, cookie cutters make great gadgets for the quilting room. Just trace around the outside of the cookie cutter onto the paper side of your favorite paper-backed fusible web and voila, easy-peasy fusible applique shapes. Use beads and glitter like candy sprinkles to make them look like sugar cookie appliques or simply use fabric that goes with the shapes.
If you want your cookie cutter applique to be a two-part design like my strawberries at left, just trace around each part of the cookie cutter separately and fill in the gap after you remove the cookie cutter. See image above where I first traced the strawberry part only, then drew a line across the top to make a closed shape. Then I repeated the two steps with the leaf part of the strawberry design. Next get your iron out, fuse the two parts to fabric, cut them out, then arrange the pieces as desired and fuse them together.
Does this ever happen to you: after buying a wonderful piece of fabric at your LQS, you bring it home only to find out that you already have it in your stash?
I’ve been doing a lot of bead embroidery these days so here are some tips for those of you who’d like to do more bead embellishment on your quilts but might be intimidated by all those pesky supplies you have to go out and buy.
However, if you’re anything like me, you can’t resist those yummy bead soup mixes. How do you match your thread to that? Are you really supposed to buy thread to match all the hues in your bead box? Even worse, imagine switching your needle and thread with each and every bead you stitch down!
