Elizabeth Poole Shares All

I am still digesting the beautiful pieces in the Face Challenge that came our in the Quilting Arts magazine. My favorite was Elizabeth Poole's Study in Reds...I thought it was wonderful...now mind you it wasn't a face...but it was a beautiful body...I stared and stared at it and was in awe...wondering How did She Do That?

I went online and posted a message asking how it was done...hoping that some how my message would be read by Ms. Poole. It was and not only did she answer my question she also went into great detail. I think that it is wonderful that folks are willing to share their techniques and their crafts with us Wannabes.

This is what she wrote about her work on pg 64 of the Winter Quilting Arts 2005:

To begin with, a lot of the fabrics were my own monoprints -- I use either my own hand-dyes or regular commercial fabrics and then monoprint them, either with bleach discharge or thickened fabric dye. Sometimes I put lots of layers of process on a single panel, basically until it's done. There are a reasonable number of examples of these fabrics on my website:http://elizabethpoole.com/gallery/fabrics/index.html I sell these at galleries and shows for $10 to $30 per fat-quarter panel,and desperately need to update the site. A lot of the ones there have sold, and I have a lot of new ones. My partner took the digital photograph I worked from. I cropped it to the section I wanted to use, then made an 8.5x11 drawing of only that section.Then I used tracing paper to trace each part of the drawing that I wanted to do in a different fabric, and positioned the traced patterns over the mono prints. The translucence of the tracing paper lets me position thepattern piece over the design lines in the fabric that I think will be effective. And then it's just like a garment pattern piece -- I cut it out. :) I also make a rough tracing of my drawing on Wonder Under, then iron theWonder Under onto interfacing or batting. Now I have a rough guide for positioning my pattern pieces, as well as something slightly tacky to use to hold the pieces in place. Position all pieces, curse while recutting the ones where my initial fabric choice just doesn't work right, and lightly press in place once the pieces ARE working. I once recut the same piece out of five different fabrics before I found one that worked.
From there I free motion stitch, either running or satin, with a darning foot on a Bernina 801 that I bought in 1980 and love dearly. I use rayon threads almost exclusively these days.If you wanted the art how-tos rather than the technique ones, like "how did you happen to pick those fabrics and not flesh tones?", well, that's harderto articulate. Those were the fabrics that leapt into my hands, and that' about the best I can do. :) My thanks to the gang at Quilting Arts for taking such a killer picture ofthe piece. I've received word from the piece's owner that it's ok with herfor it to tour with the Quilting Arts challenge through 2006, so it will.--cheers, Elizabethelizabeth.poole@gmail.com http://elizabethpoole.com