Houston Class #1 - Paint Sticks with Laura Murray

The Houston International Quilt Festival was fantastic. You can read about the overview here.  I was fortunate enough to be able to take several classes and I learned so much in each class. 

My first class was a Paint Sticks class with Laura Murray.  I had bought some of her tiles and paint sticks at a show several years ago, but this process was so far out of my comfort zone that I hadn't even cracked the plastic on the products. So I was uber excited to learn from Laura how she makes these terrific fabrics by embellishing plain fabric with paint sticks and textured tiles.




It really was quite easy. You just place the fabric over a texture tile and rub over it with an oil-based paint stick. OK, there are some tricks to it to get good results, but even my ho-hum (technically and color choice speaking) results looked stunning.

We used Laura's Exotica stamp set and a choice of several paint sticks to make several different mini blocks that were cut apart and layered to make a complete block. No sewing - its all fused. Laura's website is great - it even includes instructions on how to create the Exotica block we did in class. You can find it here.




Since I don't have the exact colors of paint sticks at home as we used in class, I decided to use the single block to make a mini project. After micro stippling the background, I had the block framed. I think it turned out great.

I can really see making more of these. It was fun, pretty fast and easy, and with several different tiles and colors I can envision tons of creative colorful blocks.

Curious about paint sticks? Check out Laura Murray's site. She'll also be teaching at the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival in June 2017.