I have had a lot of questions about how I did the borders on Canterbury Silk and Canterbury Knight. Here’s a brief little description in case you’d like to try it. First of all, here is the list of supplies:
- Black Radiance…sandwiched and quilted in the pattern you wish to paint. I quilted mine with Superior Magnifico gold thread. It looks almost metallic, and it absorbs the paint if you want to cover it in places. Real metallic paints also work, but the stitching is harder to cover. (I like to cover the central parts of the flowers and leaves, and leave the edges unpainted).
- Paint used:
- Setacolor shimmer paints like these: shimmer-starter-set.html”>http://www.dharmatrading.com/kits/starter/sets/setacolor-shimmer-starter-set.html
- Setacolor glitter finishes (comes in gold and silver)
- Jacquard lumiere paint like these: http://www.dickblick.com/products/jacquard-lumiere-acrylics/
- Q-tips: When dipped in water and rung out with your finger tips a little, these make an fairly adequate eraser if used within a few minutes.
- Small flat good quality brushes
- Water with brush washer: Here is a list: http://www.dickblick.com/categories/brushwashers/
Look at this close up detail of some of my border: The leaves were first painted bronze metallic color, then I used two layers of different greens after that to get a more natural looking leaves. I did similar layers for depth of color on all the rest of the swirls and flowers. Then I painted the red peppers, red swirl areas, and gold swirls with gold glitter finish (it goes on kind of milky in color and it dries clear. I used silver glitter finish on the blue swirls and flowers. After it had all dried a couple of hours or more, I heat set it. In this case, I turned it upside down onto a soft towel and steamed it from the back without resting my iron too hard on the quilt because I wanted that trapunto-like texture to stay in place. Coincidentally, I used this steam press to block the quilt at the same time since I did not wash these quilts after completion.
Corner detail
You can also see there are other painted items on Canterbury Knight, like the birds and the music boy.
Canterbury Knight Complete
I talked about those, which I inked on white prepared for dye silk, in my earlier blogpost here: https://blog.bjfabricartist.com/2015/02/canterbury-knight-painting-fusible-appliques/
Sew there you have it. That’s how I prepared my painted borders for both Canterbury quilts. I am planning at least one more in the Canterbury series and I will likely use this technique on other quilts too.
Sew happy everyone! Have fun in your creative space. Cheers!