Stenciling your way to Happiness!

We've got such exciting news at Yellow Bird Art! We're now carrying a huge selection of stencils from Diane Ericson as well as her instructional DVD of fabric stenciling techniques. Last Sunday, Deb Blackburn - a NEW EMPLOYEE! at Yellow Bird was visiting and we spent delightful hours in my studio learning how to stencil fabrics. We've known Deb since just about when we opened Yellow Bird Art. She's one of those multi-talented women - worked helping build houses for a contractor, repaired bicycles, worked in retail mall shops, managed another quilt shop for almost two years. She gardens, flies a hot air balloon with her husband Sam, felts, knits, quilts, beads, has a degree in psychology - often helpful in stressful retail situations - and in general has a positive upbeat outlook on life. We're so lucky to have her join the staff!

Stenciling is such an elegant way to embellish fabrics that are already wonderful as you see in this small Kona Bay sample. Deb thought it would be nice to add just a small metallic accent, and it did make the fabric even more lucious.

This is another sample using the Architectural Elements stencil, which has 7 different stencil designs that can be combined in so many different ways. Again, another Kona Bay fabric with just a little new zip of metallic gold!

The fabric on the top was stenciled with the Calla Lily stencil and the fabric on the bottom with the Bugs stencil. We used Jacquard Luminere fabric paints. You end up using the smallest amount of paints and the hand of the fabric remains soft and pliable.

Now, this would be a photo of Amy and me on our way to the Rochester, MN quilt guild www.qsrochester.org to provide the afternoon and evening programs. I think Amy was ignoring me. Amy gave a great lecture on using large scale prints in quilts, and my evening lecture and demonstration was on using stencils and fabric paint to embellish fabric.

We'll all be back in the car and on our way to Pittsburgh for the Spring Quilt Market tomorrow. Deb is coming along with us - she has great ideas and has been to market before, so we know that her new ideas will help us bring back the best of market for you! Be on the lookout for a postcard announcing our post-market party so you can see all the new goodies we round up.

posted by Angela