Lava quilt blocks from Spoonflower - part two

My lava fabric that I told you about last week arrived from Spoonflower, and I ironed it out and began to paint it just as soon as I could find a couple of uninterrupted hours. 

1. I was really pleased with the way it turned out.  I ordered a good quality cotton print on a fat quarter, and it was exactly what I was looking for.

2. My first step in adding color was to choose some acrylic paints and water them down a lot.  It was very helpful to have a nice wide margin of fabric around the blocks so that I could test colors.

3. I added thin washes of the colors and built up some layers to make them fade into each other.  I let the paints dry and then heat set them with an iron.

4. While I had the iron out, I added a very lightweight fusible interfacing to the back.  Later, when I cut the blocks apart, this will keep them from unraveling.

5. I used Inktense pencils to add more definition and color to the texture of the lava.  Here (above) it is shown still wet, and below is what it looked like when dry.  You can see in the right margin that I sampled the various pencils before committing to them.  Since they are permanent once dry, I wanted to be sure of my color choices.  Even though Inktense pencils don't really need to be heat set, I ironed the fabric again anyway after it dried just for extra insurance.

Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four

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Copyright 2012 Cyndi Lavin. All rights reserved. Not to be reprinted, resold, or redistributed for profit. May be printed out for personal use or distributed electronically provided that entire file, including this notice, remains intact.