Jaquard Lumiere Paints on My Quilts

My art quilting friend Nina-Marie Sayre asked me recently how and why I might want to paint on my quilts!  :)  I shared a few photographs on Facebook of this miniature quilt I'm working on as sort of a practice piece to work out some quilting I would like to do on a larger project I have in the works.

You can click on the photographs to see them larger if it helps - each plume has been lightly painted with an irridescent water based fabric paint to add a little shadow and dimension to the quilting.  I'll share a photo of what the feathers looked like before painting them:

There is a pretty dramatic difference between the two!  Of course I have added more quilting to the photos of the painted version, but there is still quite a difference when you stand back and look at the two.

Nina is an art quilter so I know she totally gets the need for creative experimentation...but I am more of a traditional quilter who fiddles around with art quilts.  So why might a traditional quilter want to paint her quilt?  Well I personally have a major love for whole cloth quilts.  When I began machine quilting I discovered that my ultimate joy comes from the quilting process.  But they totally stink to photograph!!!  I want to make whole cloth quilts where the quilting can be SEEN...and not just in good lighting.

I also really love whole cloth quilts made of bright colored hand dyes and tie dyed fabrics...but you often cannot see the quilting.  So that is why I started fiddling with paints to see what I could achieve.

I first heard about painting on quilts to highlight definition from Master Quilter Diane Gaudynski.  She uses Shiva Paintstiks - an oil based paint but in a stick form - and lightly paints her quilting to add defintion and shadow.  I LOVE the look - but when I played with the Shiva paints I had a really difficult time keeping it from looking grainy and controlling the amount of paint applied.  I tried applying it directly from the stick as well as with a paint brush. 

So after a few failed attempts with the Shiva paints I decided to try Lumiere paints by Jaquard.  I originally bought the paints to use with stencils - but the cool thing about these paints is they are water based...so you can water them down and just use a touch for a hint of color and definition.  Also they are sparkly....and I like just about all things sparkly.  :)

Once heat set the paints are safe to wash when used on fabric - though the kind of quilts I generally make that are painted are rarely if ever washed outside of a damp cloth.

I love these paints!!  I love the way it turned out so much I am even doing some painting on my big white applique quilt...eep!  Pictures to come!  :)

Linking up with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday!  :)

Linking up with Nina-Marie for Off the Wall Friday!!  :)