Kindle and Festival of Quilts

I've been wanting to make a kindle cover for some time and now I have finally managed to do it. I've used a whole range of appliqué techniques and what seems to be one of  my "trademark"  fabrics, organza. There are four layers of appliqué in the finished piece - layered and cut into organza, Lutrador which I coloured with inktense pencils, stitched on to black cotton and cut away using a fabric soldering iron and then some of the pieces which were cut away were stitched back on, polyester dupion, lame and sparkly tulle which was over-stitched and then distressed using a heat gun, and finally icicles which were made from organza laid over lame.

Lots of layers, lots of stitching, and lots of texture! To line it I used a piece of self dyed shibori fabric which I dyed using woad which gives a lovely pastel blue.

I had a great time at the Festival of Quilts last week and especially enjoyed the three day masterclass taught by Jo Lovelock in which she taught a whole range of ways of dyeing fabric. It was quite hard work at times with lots of fabric which needed to be rinsed by hand and also some methods which involved having to agitate buckets of fabric for up to 10 minutes at a time. Amongst the most useful techniques taught were ones which enabled us to produce pieces of fabrics which shared gradations of colour within a family or with gradations of shades and colours. We were encouraged to mix colours and over dye fabrics and shown how to get texture into our fabric and to think about how to place colours to get different effects. Now all i have to do is sew it! Watch this space - I don't think I'll be buying any fabric for quite a while.