The Painted Quilt Experiment

Now the making of this quilt was a bit of an experiment from the start. I had won the 4 inch color wheel blocks in a give away, and to be quite be honest was at a bit of a loss to know what to do with them as I rarely use commercial print, but I decided to to put them with a hand painted chocolate brown because all the colours reminded me of the brightly coloured wrappers you get on some chocolates.

Now I could have been more precise in my painting and get a more even coverage but I actually thought that it would be more interesting not to. After all, you might as well just buy a solid as do that.

Anyway, as you can see it wasn't one of my better plans, although I have to say that it doesn't actually look as bad as it does in the photograph!

However, this is not the experiment I talk of in the title, because although I have and do make quilts with painted fabrics, as you can see here and here for example, I always have had a bit of a niggle in the back of my mind about how well a quilt, that is in proper use, would last, if the fabrics are painted.

I used to think that it would be a no no, but after recently reassigning the family lap quilt to the dog's bed, (because it was looking so tatty after only a couple of years use and the fabrics were from a very, and I mean very, well known fabric designer) I thought that my painted fabrics can do no worse and the only way to find out is to make a quilt and put it through it's paces.

So, I know this will take a bit of time but I will be doing a before and after analysis, and will let you know what the results are.

This quilt even has hand dyed pieces in the binding so we will see how they stand up to repeated washing also.
Hope you can stick around to see the results.