Dyed Blankets

In an earlier post (Slashed Tucks) I backed the piece I was working on with dyed blanket and explained that at one time I was buying woollen blankets from the charity shops and dyeing them to use in different projects.
Yesterday evening I was searching for something (and I can’t for the life of me remember what it was now!) and came across these U.F.O’s which were all made from dyed blankets, several years ago now. I used machine stitching and cut back appliqué on all of them.

This was my very first practise piece. It uses just two layers of blanket and a layer of calico which I drew the design out on first. I then machined it from the back following the drawn lines.



The design was taken from an indigo dyed West African stencilled cloth made with a metal stencil and paste resist.


This one also uses only two layers and was made in the same way as the previous one. The design was based on the boxed edition of the DVD ‘The Fifth Element’ starring Bruce Willis if I remember correctly. Both these pieces measure 65 x 65 cms.



For these two, the blankets were sewn in strips and sandwiched with wadding and calico.


The motif design was taken from the graphic work of M C Escher. I had already used this motif for a complete piece measuring 65 x 65 cms in a black foreground and red background.

These following two pieces each measure 20 x 27 cms. The blue and the red in this one are dyed blanket but the green, yellow and white are manufactured felt. It would have been impossible to cut such small shapes out if I had used blanket for all five layers.

The design was taken from a yarn picture made in Mexico where acrylic yarns are pressed on to a wax covered board. A lot of the symbols used are religious or sacred objects. This one shows a temple, a gods eye and a prayer arrow.

Once again, in this one it is only the background and the red layer which are actual blanket. The other four colours are felt.

This idea came from the Harriet Powers Bible Quilts and depicts Cain killing Abel. The story of Harriet Powers and her quilts makes very interesting reading.

This final piece is made with a blanket foreground and a silk noil background. Both have been tea dyed. Backed with calico where the pattern outline had been drawn before being machine stitched they are sandwiched with two layers each of wadding and batting.

I had started to work stab stitch on the areas of exposed silk noil and bullion stitch with stab stitch on the woollen blanket area.

I reckon that if there were an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of U.F.O’s and W.I.P’s. I would win hands down!!