My sis's quilt is still bothering me!!! I posted it a while back and played with it and I'm still not happy!! Decided to take a look at it again and decided that the beige tone-on-tone is what is bothering me. I guess when I started this quilt years ago, my thought process was I wanted the heart to stand out so I used a lighter beige to offset it. I guess its really not the look I'm after. I'm thinking that if I can get it to be more tonal I may be happier.

Here's the question: Can you paintbrush areas alone without doing everything? Has anyone every tried this?

I don't know if this will help you & I cannot answer about paint brushing. I have however had a dilema something like yours so I used reg. Crayons & colored what I wanted to achieve. Then I heat set them with papertowels underneath and over the colored section. So far so good. There was a time that Crayons were used to color the whole design on blocks. HTH

I don't know why you couldn't paint the area you wanted to paint. But setting it, I don't know how you'd do that unless you also painted it with something to set what you used to paint. I probably just confused you. I'm sorry if I did. :wink:

Some quilt artists paint portions of their quilts to get the effect they want. I guess I'd experiment with a piece of fabric first, especially if using coffee, to make sure that it creates the effect I want and that it will last through machine washing and drying.

Try mixing different amounts of instant coffee with clear aloe vera gel, like what you buy for sunburns. It will keep it from running unless that is the effect you are going for. The aloe will wash out leaving the dye/coffee/tea behind. I would play with some scraps using this, just coffee or tea and at different strengths and see which appeals to you the most.
Dry fabric will give you one look, and damp another :D:D:D

I took the suggestion about trying it out. Had leftover coffee in the pot!! Problem is its a tonal. Its a large flower tonal and the flowers are taking the dye, but the tonal part isn't! Can you break this tonal down somehow?

This quilt is just kicking my butt!!! I just want to get it done and ship it out, but its like an albatrose around my neck.

I found this link on staining with coffee and tea.
http://www.sewfunpatterns.com/antiquingfabric.html

I don't know of any way of breaking a tonal down.

Thanks Jan!! Actually, after I soaked my little snippets and let them dry, they actually didn't come out looking to bad. More equalized. Now I have to figure out exactly how much of the area I want to do.

This is a quilt top I started probably 10-11-12yrs ago. I think I understand what I was going for, Love the middle, but haven't ever been happy with it otherwise. I just can't ship out something I'm not atleast a little happy with! :roll: I think I'm going to take the borders off and start from scratch. Dye the middle area, to blend better and go from there.

I have put myself through h*** because I absolutely positively HATE to seam rip!!!!! Have thrown things away instead!!! Well after everything I've done to it trying to fix things and try making it look nicer, it would have definitely taken less time to rip it out then go through all of this!!! :shock:

Sometimes you just gotta laugh at yourself!!! :lol: :lol: OH WELL!!

LMBO I am like you... it is more FUN to spend time trying everything else BUT ripping out the problem part LOL

have fun and would love to see a photo