About Brush Rags...

Many followers are not aware that I also paint fabric for quilters looking for something different.  This is a very low key little business as I carefully need to manage the three legs of my quilting passion - quilt artist, quilt teacher and producing Brush Rags hand-painted fabric.  The fabrics are available from me by appointment, at local Guild meetings in Port Elizabeth, where ever I teach and at National Quilt Festivals where my dear friends from our local quilt shop Pied Piper, generously sell my fabric since 2002.   

I'm sure many of you can identify with the frustration of not finding the right fabric for a specific project.   For me personally it was also one of the frustrations of living in a smaller city/town where quilt shops were a luxury in the 1990's!  Online shopping was via the mail order era of the 1990's! 

I was working on my quilt entry for the 1994 SA National Quilt Festival and the deadline was slowly but surely creeping up on me.   To my frustration, I could not find any suitable fabric for the border section of my quilt. After thinking about this for many days, I had the brainwave to paint a piece of fabric which would be the perfect match for my quilt!  I rushed off to buy a nice quality calico, paint brushes, fabric paint and excitedly set up a painting station in my sewing room!  I was ready to paint a masterpiece that would take my quilt to the next level...!   Oh dear, I froze and could not do anything that looked remotely decent.  I had a deadline and the panic struck as I heard the clock ticking...!   After a few attempts, I managed to paint a piece which had all the right colours and effects that I needed (but it wasn't wonderful!)   It did the job and looked right for the project.  From there on I regularly dabbled with fabric paints as I enjoyed the mess I created!  Fabric painting solved my problem of finding suitable fabric for the realistic nature & wildlife quilts I created during that phase.

This piece was similar to the very first piece of fabric I painted for a competition quilt in 1994

I began giving gifts of hand painted fabric to quilting friends until one suggested that I should paint fabric to sell...   As I always love a challenge, I decided to give it a go!   Brush Rags was born in 2001 and I started selling my fabrics at the Dias Quilters' Guild meetings.   The "brush" indicates that the fabric was painted with a brush and the "rags" refers to pieces of fabric.   As painting fabric is so different to the dyeing process, I'm limited with the sizes of fabric which I paint.   Once the paint is applied to the fabric, it must dry undisturbed on the surface onto which it was painted otherwise it smudges!   That is why brush rags are only available in fat quarters as my paint boards are cut to that size.  The other problem is the length of my arms - it is a challenge to handle bigger boards.   The weather has a huge impact on fabric painting - if the atmosphere is very damp, I don't even try to paint as the fat quarters don't dry properly especially if I use salt techniques.  It is the best to dry the fabric in the sun as it dries the paint properly after which it rests in the studio for at least a week before I fix the painted surfaces and start the cleaning process.

I started off by painting simple techniques on a lovely quality of calico, some of the techniques are still part of my regular stock.   Unfortunately most of our textile factories who produced good quality calico have closed down and I had to switch to another fabric.   I chose percale cotton which is available locally.  Although the thread-count is higher than calico, the quality is consistent which is important!   Brush Rags are very suitable for raw edge applique techniques as it does not fray.

Brush Rags - the beginning...

I regularly experiment and try to produce new finishes to make it exciting for me to paint.   I introduced a few new lines this year which seems to be very popular with quilters, the highlight was when Helen Godden from Australia bought some of the fabric at the 2019 National Quilt Festival at Heronbridge and was so kind to make a video clip of the fabric to promote Brush Rags.  I usually paint a range of different finishes in the same colours.   The following swatches are some of the current stock:

4 different finishes in orange, cerise and purple.

Jade, blue and purple

Olive, purple and gold

Rust, gold and navy

Orange, cerise and red

Grey

Earlier in the year I started discharging black cotton fabric which gives very dramatic finishes.  Here are swatches of the latest batch:

A selection of discharged black fabric.

I also started rusting fabric - great fun and lovely results, but so messy and rough on the hands....  I find it difficult to work with gloves as my hands are too clumsy then!

Rust Rags - some over-painted.

The thrill of painting fabric is to see how I can transform an ordinary piece of white fabric into a piece of art...   After the whole process of washing the fabric, cutting into fat quarters, painting every piece, drying, ironing to fix the paint, washing again to get rid of paint residue and salt, ironing with the press and the final folding and packaging of the fat quarters - a labour intensive process but oh so satisfying...!   Some finishes take one or two applications of paint, others take up to 6 - 8 applications to build up the design/colour.   Because the process is so labour intensive, I made the choice to keep it small to enable me to teach quilting, be a quilter and still have a life apart from quilting!   

Price tags...

A few years ago, two friends and I visited exhibitions at the Grahamstown Art Festival and we walked in on artist Daniel Novela talking to students about his work. This man is truly one of the finest artists whose work I have had the privilege to see.  He exhibited extensively overseas to great acclaim and the price tags of his paintings reflected just that - he was successful and his work respected and appreciated by art lovers.  One of the students referred to a specific painting (with quite a steep asking price) and asked him how long it took to paint the specific piece...   Daniel told him about 25 years - the students could not believe what they heard.  He went on to explain that it had taken him 25 years to get to the point where he could paint like that...!   In short, he had put in the hours experimenting, learning and honing his art and at last he was free to paint with finesse, confidence and understanding of his creative medium.   

A friend and I recently discussed pricing of artwork as it can be rather tricky, I think most artists find this to be a huge challenge.   The process of creating a piece of art whether it is textile art, pottery, sculptures etc. is slow and requires skill, lots of patience and experience.   Added to this will of course be the costs of the materials used which artists usually purchase at retail prices...  Often items needed for the process, cannot even be seen in the finished product but it must reflect in the price tag!  For some artwork, even electricity and water consumption must be factored in which will increase the cost of an item which the buying public often are not aware of...!     

The creative process is really addictive, but realistically, what does one do with all of the art pieces?  Obviously it is a good option to sell as it helps to recoup some of the expenses and it can finance the next burst of creativity while some artists make a living by selling their art!  As I've been in a creative limbo or slumber after Siyadala, I decided to make small mandalas to sell at the Dias Shoppe at the 2018 Dias Quilters' Guild annual Spring Show to get out of my limbo!  This provided an ideal opportunity for me to create and sell original pieces for collectors of fibre art.   I must admit, I initially planned to make 6 mandalas and ended up with 10, I was having great fun and wanted to experiment with different colour combinations and once I got going, I could not stop! 

The starting point was size as my focus was on selling, it had to be affordable!   As already mentioned, it is quite difficult to put a price tag on ones work...!   Workmanship, uniqueness of piece, stature of the artist and the concept should all play a role when deciding on value of a piece.   An artist who have honed his/her art/craft for more than 30 years and have won multiple awards for her/his work, should be confident enough to factor expertise into the price tag, a lesson learnt from Daniel Novela.

I made the mandalas in pairs, using colour combinations and the selection of fabric and threads as the common "thread".   Each mandala was individually designed, fused, raw edge appliqued/quilted and certain sections were outlined with couched cording.   All the mandalas were stretched onto artists canvas which was the ideal option for a small piece of fibre art.  All the mandalas were created from cotton and silk.

Herbs & Spice 1                                          Herbs & Spice 2

Lapis Lazuli 1                                             Lapis Lazuli 2   

Tropical Summer 1                                       Tropical Summer 2

Vintage 1                                                            Vintage 2

Vivid 1                                                            Vivid 2

I loved creating these mandalas and I trust it will also give the owners great joy to own a bit of my soul.