Playing with colours

You’ll need

- Regular wax crayons

- Ink and drawing tool, or fabric markers; I use ink and Fantastix from JukeboxQuilts

- A piece of freezer paper

- White fabric, washed and ironed

- Scrap of fabric for ironing

- A motif; any kind of appliqué or stitchery pattern, illustration or drawing would do fine. I have used a clip art Santa from Excel for this sample.

Using ink, you don’t have to stabilize the white fabric with freezer paper just yet. If you are using a hard tip fabric marker for drawing, you should iron freezer paper to the back.

Place your motif on top of a newspaper to protect your work surface.

Place the white fabric on top of the drawing; you should be able to see the lines through the fabric. If not, use a light box. I use a flashlight under a glass dish as my light box.

Draw all lines using ink or markers. If you’re using ink, dip just the tip of your Fantastix in the ink, and draw lightly. The unevenness of the lines is part of the charm using ink.

Let it dry, and fix the colour using a dry, hot iron.

Iron a piece of freezer paper to the back of the fabric, and start colouring the motif.

Fix the colours by placing a scrap of fabric on top of the motif and press using a dry, hot iron. The heat will melt the wax and set the colours into the fabric. The colours will get lighter, as some colour will come off on the fabric scrap.

You might have to add several layers of colour to get the result you want. Fix the colours between every layer.

Now you can make your motif into a small quilt, or make several blocks for a bigger piece.

I have free motion quilted the ink lines with black thread, the sky with a blue thread, and the snow with a silver metallic thread.