DIGITAL CLASS REVIEW AND QUILT: PAINTED PICTORIAL QUILTS WITH ANNETTE KENNEDY, PART I

I signed up for this Craftsy course a while back, which went through the intricacies of painting on pictorial art quilts.  There were two class projects to work on and this was the second one (the first still needing quilting).

I really enjoyed this class and found it very useful as I really do not know about brush strokes, shading, ways of thickening fabric paint etc.  There are 15 lessons which total 6 hours of classes.  Annette's quilts are very inspiring when you see what a difference painting on them makes.  On the negative side, I think the class should have been edited down to a more manageable size as you do spend a lot of time literally watching paint dry!  The regular price is $39.99, but Craftsy always has classes on sale, so just wait until it is a more reasonable price of $15-20.

This is one of the two class projects I undertook, using their pattern.  This is how the project looked at the beginning. 

Here is a closer look.  You can see the pencil marks to aid the painting process.

The lower part of the mountain range was painted in first.  I used Setacolour fabric paints.  Unfortunately I couldn't find the mixing agent suggested, which is used to stop the paint running everywhere.  After some research, I used clear aloe vera gel, which seemed to work well.  At the very least the quilt smelled fantastic!

The quilt really started to come alive at this stage when the back ranges were painted in.  It was really exciting to see depth.

Skipping forward, the sand area has been painted and the small plants added.

Shadow has been added under the plants and the road painted in and shadowed.  Oh yes, a rather unfortunate drop fell off my brush just by the lower mountain range - which became a boulder!

The hardest part for me was quilting this project.  I wanted it to have very little quilting so that the painting would shine, which was extremely difficult for me being a graduate of the 'quilt it to death' school!

I really love the look of the plants.  Close up you can see the underpainting.

The finished quilt.  I added the boarder as it is a tiny quilt and it needed to be framed somehow.

A great class and I enjoyed this project the most as it reminded me of my Utah road trips.  Since it isn't actually my road trip, I'll call it Annette's Road Trip!