Colored Pencil Scribbling

I took a class last week by an amazing hand applique teacher Arlene Southworth and learned to color and shade the little girls face, hands and legs with colored pencils. This is my practice piece made in class and looks more like scribbling to me. When I get a little more time to play and practice I hope to have more success. The hair is colored and then sewn with stitchery and the clothing will be hand appliqued as illustrated in the photo's below.





This is Arlene's quilt made with 30's Reproduction fabrics. I think it's just amazing, she has some beautiful work. I plan to set my blocks differently, but I like the idea of using colored pencils on fabric and wanted to learn Arlene's techniques. Colored pencils are known to wash out so Arlene has not washed her quilt like a lot of hand appliqued quilts.

Some of the ladies in class are testing several brands of colored pencils for water resistance, so hopefully I'll know soon which brands are preferable. I've heard that ironing the colored pencil will make it permanent, but I've been told by some of my classmates that's not the case. So I'm exploring some ideas to come up with a fixative to make the colored pencils permanent. Hopefully more on that to come. If you've worked with this medium, I'd love to hear from you.



This is another closeup view of one of the children. Any ideas on how to set these blocks are welcome. I've been working on a grandma's flower garden quilt for 9 years so I'm not exactly excited about making another one in this lifetime. :)

Thanks for stopping by and have a creative day.