Crayon Fabric Art Quilting.

Today I wanted to share with you my Crayon Fabric Art quilting, I found this process really easy. I used regular wax crayons (Faber-Castell, Crayola, etc.) the kind you buy at the local shops instead of special fabric crayons.

The fabric I chose to use for this small whole cloth project was a white 30/70% poly-cotton blend, I could have used off-white, or pastels but I wanted the lightest colour so I picked white, as I thought a darker colour would have been hard to colour and shade for my first attempt at this process. Before I started it was important too remove all the manufacturing chemical treatment from the fabric, (sizing) by washing the fabric, without adding fabric softener, I did this because if the chemical is not washed out of the fabric, the sizing will act as a barrier and repel the crayons pigments once the wax has evaporated by pressing with a hot dry iron, so I pre-washed and dried the white poly-cotton blend and ironed the fabric to remove all the wrinkles.

Here is the rest of the process

Cut freezer paper to the exact same size as the whole cloth and ironed it to the back side of the background fabric, this stabilized the fabric and made it easy to traces my design using a HB pencil onto the whole cloth.

Now came the fun part colouring the designs with crayons outlining the edges with darker shades of colour to make them stand out. I found the harder you pressed the crayons the darker the colours would be. I applied my crayon colours in one, then two, then three layers. When the coloured area had too much crayon wax I would press the area with a hot dry iron making sure I had paper towel between the top and bottom of the whole cloth and I also covered the top with the Teflon pressing sheet. The hot iron would melt the wax and set the colour pigment into the warm fabric, once the colour pigment was set I could colour the area again, and again adding lots of layers of colour giving me a deeper depth of shades of colour.

When I was happy with my crayon colouring, I peeled off the freezer paper from the back of my fabric and again pressed the whole cloth fabric between two pieces of paper towel, putting one behind and one on top with the Teflon pressing sheet to cover the area to be pressed. This is the secret to soaking up all the melted wax and also keeps the wax from getting on my ironing board and iron.
Using the cotton setting on my iron lift and press for 10 seconds in each area and then move to the next area taking extreme care not to glide my iron over the Teflon Pressing sheet or scorch my fabric....the last step was to repress using paper towels only on the top and bottom this was to removes any oils, which may have been left in the fabric. I then wiped off my iron and Teflon Pressing sheet to remove colour residue which may have been left.  I used Rayon embroider threads and matched the colours of the background colours which gave a soft sheen and variegated threads to add interest.

This Clear View Foot includes inner 1/4" and outer 3/8" marks for even spacing when echo quilting eliminating the need to mark out the fabric beforehand. It also has a convenient slot opening for quilting and zig zag stitching for free motion applique.

I think I will use the gum blossom and bamboo stitches from this practice block and free moton quilt the area. Not sure yet.

Happy quilting until next time

Anne