Full Bloom: Painted Peltex SAQA Donation

Every year, SAQA [Studio Art Quilt Associates] http://www.saqa.com/gallery-mini-detail.php?ID=2053 has a fundraising auction. I have contributed for the past few years, but this year the deadline snuck up on me. Fortunately, I had an almost finished piece that I felt I could part with. I called it Full Bloom. When I began the piece, I looked at the roses in my garden that were in full bloom. They were so big, colorful and exquisitely scented that I wanted to try and capture their essence. Roses are a common theme in art, in crafts and in advertising. They are a magical flower--they come back year after year even though I do very little to encourage them. The smell of fresh roses is heavenly and enchanting. I am more a painter than a quilter, and began my art career as a fabric designer, so I am always trying to find ways to get my original work onto cloth, rather than using commercial fabric. Many times the paint on fabric comes out too stiff or too rubbery, or it runs and blurs when I don't want it to, and looks wishy-washy when dry. One method that works for me is painting on Peltex with Portfolio water soluble oil pastels. The Peltex, which is like a very heavy, stiff felt, absorbs a lot of the paint, and the piece gets pretty soggy, but when it dries the colors remain bright and the watercolor, painterly effects endure. Varying shades of pink and red thread were used to free motion quilt over the painted Peltex. However, it needed a little more interest, so I used some very delicate commercial silk leaves that were in my supply drawer, and scattered them around the piece. The finishing touches were tiny beads and sequin accents.