I’m a quilt artist, author, and teacher, as well as a Developmental Editor for C&T Publishing.
I’ve written two books—Fast, Fun & Easy® Fabric Dyeing and Fast, Fun & Easy® Creative Fabric Clocks, co-written two books on inkjet printing on fabric—More Photo Fun and Innovative Fabric Imagery, and am featured in a DVD—Lynn Koolish Teaches You Printing on Fabric.
I work in a variety of styles and love to explore new techniques.
For more information, visit my website at www.lynnkoolish.com.
I just came back from a short teaching trip down at the Monterey Peninsula Quilt Guild, where I taught a one day Photoshop Elements class. The guild had made arrangements to use a computer lab at a local senior center. We had 13 PCs all loaded with Photoshop Elements ready to go.
Some of the guild members had used Elements and some had not, so we started out with the basic features and functions and worked our way up. After going through the basics, students had a chance to see how to use the program to create images to print on fabric and to create images that could be interpreted in fabric. We also explored using Elements to design an entire quilt, trying out options for borders, sashing, and so on.
I brought down copies of all of our printing on fabric books, and everyone, including the staff at the computer lab, was awed by all the amazing things you can create when you print your own images on fabric.
I had some free time the next day, so one of the members took me to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There’s a new exhibit there on Seahorses that was fabulous—and of course a fantastic opportunity to take photos.
Lynn Koolish is the co-author of Innovative Fabric Imagery for Quilts.
I had another opportunity to teach a class using the Liquitex Surface Design Center. This time it was for a retreat at Point Bonita in the beautiful Marin Headlands. Most of the participants were accomplished quilters and many had some experience with paints. I gave them a quick demo of some of the things you can do with the paints including painting washes, using the Acrylic Inks!, and monoprinting, and set them loose.
It was exciting to see all the different ways that people were using the paint, and all the different looks they were creating.
Stevii Graves monoprinting
Continue Reading…
Lutradur vase painted with Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic Paint
They say that “necessity is the mother of invention,” and I agree.
Here’s the story: It was a Saturday, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do at my Japanese flower arranging class the next morning. I’d been playing with Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic paints a lot lately, and had also been using Lutradur.
I’ve made a few Lutradur vases, so I figured I’d make another one. I decided to use the Ellipse Vase (Fish Bowl) from Linda Johansen’s Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Vases book. I painted the Lutradur with the Liquitex paints and hung it up to dry. I wanted the vase to be bigger than the large size in the book, so I enlarged the pattern.
As soon as the Lutradur was dry, I cut out the pieces and sewed them together. Because the Lutradur doesn’t fray and I didn’t need to satin stitch the edges, it went together in a flash. To give myself a few more design opportunities, I cut a hole in each side of the vase and voila.
In case you’re interested, the flowers are Bougainvilla and the silver strands are wrapped cords called mizuhiki.
Isn’t it great that there are so many ways to do good things to help others? We recently held a BeadForLife Party.
Ugandan women turn colorful recycled paper into beautiful beads, and people who care open their hearts, homes and communities to buy and sell the beads. BeadforLife eradicates extreme poverty by creating bridges of understanding between impoverished Africans and concerned world citizens.
All profits from BeadforLife are invested in community development projects that help people work their way out of poverty. The beads thus become income, food, medicine, school fees, and hope. It is a small miracle that enriches us all.
The beads are sold online at their website and at BeadForLife parties hosted by individuals or groups. It was incredibly easy to organize the party. All you need to do is pick a date, and contact them by email. BeadForLife supplies everything you need, and provides a UPS label to ship the unsold beads back to them.
The jewelry made from the beads is beautiful, colorful, and light weight so it’s easy to wear. There are necklaces, bracelets, earrings, loose beads, and jewelry bags.
I hope you’ll take a look at their site and consider hosting your own bead party.
Inchie Collage
At Quilt Festival in Houston, as part of demonstrating the Liquitex acrylic paints that we are going to be distributing in our Surface Design Center, I was making inchies, and trying to persuade Festival attendees to paint an inchie. Every morning, I would add the inchies made the day before onto the inchie collage. Kids in particular, loved painting and without hesitation would sit down and grab a brush.
young Festival attendees painting
Inchies are a great way to play with paints – each square is just 1″ x 1″ so it’s easy to fill up the space, and as soon as you do one, you get ideas for more, and more, and…
Detail from Inchie Collage
Detail from Inchie Collage
Call me lucky that I get to go to Quilt Festival in Houston for work. There were so many fabulous quilts there and it was so exciting to see quilts made by C&T authors that won prizes.
First up, “Cinnabar and Indigo” by Judy Mathieson, which won First Place in the Innovative Pieced category.
"Cinnabar and Indigo" by Judy Mathieson
Next up is Gloria Hansen, who won 2 awards: Third Place for “Circles Collide” and Honorable Mention for “Witley Decay” in the Digital Imagery category sponsored by C&T Publishing. Continue Reading…
The Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) had a big presence at Fall Quilt Festival in Houston. Ami Simms and her volunteer crew set up and manned the booth for Festival, selling quilts to raise money and awareness to fight Alzheimer’s disease.
In addition to the ongoing sale of quilts to raise money for Alzheimer’s research, four small quilts by world-renowned quilters Hollis Chatelain, John Flynn, Becky Goldsmith, and Sue Nickels will be auctioned. The no-holds-barred, knock-down, drag-out, head-to-head, quilt-to-the-death (not really), grudge match will be held November 1-10, 2009 in the AAQI “Smackdown Auction Arena.” The 10-day online silent auction is all about bragging rights—and raising awareness and money to fight Alzheimer’s disease. Continue Reading…
Fabric dyeing at Dharma Trading, that is. I recently taught a dyeing class at Dharma Trading, one of the primary sources of Procion fiber-reactive dyes. The folks at Dharma put together a kit that included dyes, soda ash, a dust mask, gloves, and a copy of my book Fast, Fun & Easy® Fabric Dyeing.
Teaching from a book makes teaching so easy—no handouts to prepare, everyone has all the information they both in class and when the go home to work on their own.
The class was a 3-hour Introduction to Creative Fabric Dyeing the Fast, Fun & Easy Way. Everyone had a chance to try out some things. The only problem with a 3-hour class is that I don’t get to see any finished fabrics–I hope they send me emails so I can see their results.
What do you do when you have fabric that’s crying out to be used—you make it into a quilt, of course.
We were inspired by the quilt Neo Stella (page 27) in Barbara Pershing & Mary Hoover’s book StrataVarious Quilts. (We decided to keep the ends of the strata straight and piece them in rather than rounding the ends and appliquéing them.) The fabrics were Princess Mirah Batiks left over from projects we made for Color Your World with Princess Mirah Batiks.
As they say, many hands make light work, and with lots of people helping out, the quilt went together quickly.
We decided to raffle the quilt at our Summer Sizzler Warehouse sale on September 12. Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5. Proceeds benefit the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. You must be present to enter the raffle (in other words, we’re only selling the tickets at the warehouse sale), but you don’t need to be present to win.
If you live in the area (the warehouse is in Concord, CA), you must come—there are bargains galore, and of course, you can buy your raffle tickets.
