Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Pink Mandala Quilt

Thank you, kind commenters, for your suggestions on the fabric printing. I really appreciate your taking the time to steer me in the right direction.
I went through a lot of ink trying different saturation levels, both in my digital photograph and by changing the saturation level in my printer's "advanced properties" settings. I also used different fabrics, namely cotton and silk satin.
I should add that I use an Epson 6600 home printer (which cost $100 at Best Buy a year and a half ago.) I chose the Epson because it uses pigment-based inks, as opposed to the dye-based inks that HP printers use. With the pigment inks, you just have to make sure the sizing is out of the fabric, but no other pre-treatment is necessary for permanent printing.

The top print is silk satin with the saturation in the photo upped quite a bit. This was my best print by far.
I really went through that magenta ink!
I like the silk the best...but I had already printed up a full "set" of cottons so decided to try making up this little quilt out of those. This time I added machine quilting to make the flowers puff out a bit.

It doesn't have its binding on yet.

Here's a detail. I am feeling a bit more like a "sane quilter" than a crazy quilter these days...but of course I am still insane about the flowers....

9 comments :

Possibilities, Etc. said...

You do have flowers in your soul!! This is elegant - even with all that pink, it is not too sweet. Good job! JAH

Granny Fran said...

Your experiments are fascinating, and this quilt is beautiful. You inspired me to go out and pick some flowers to experiment with today. I tried a simple May Day arrangement. Just learning how to place them on the scanner and which fabrics to cover them with requires lots of adjustments. I started with an iris which was so fat it cast weird shadows.

colorbox said...

oh, this is really lovely! Somehow I can't shake the feeling that ultra embellishment may be on it's way in this process. ??? :)

Barbara C said...

It's amazing the variations you can get from tweaking the printer settings and the fabric. This piece is really lovely.

Marty52 said...

The quilting makes quite a difference, doesn't it? These just keep getting nicer!

Kay said...

Looks good, I think. The soft colors are pretty, just not what you were originally aiming for maybe. And the quilting sets it off beautifully.

Micki said...

This is so lovely. Yes, those printers sure can eat up the ink fast can't they.

Peticelul Romanesc said...

I hope you will like my post for "love is all around"
http://corinaj.wordpress.com/2007/05/03/love-thursday-2/
Corina

Anonymous said...

This is just GORGEOUS! I can't wait to see mroe!