Panthers and Tigers and Whales, oh My!

Nose of an F-8U Crusader plane, dye painted on fabric

Since “Captain Bill” (the subject of my textile painting entry for the Navy Quilt Show) was a Naval Aviator and Test Pilot, he flew all manner of aircraft.  I have a list of at least 13 different planes he’s flown, and that’s only a partial list he put together from quick memory.  Armed with the info he’s shared with me about his Navy career and having no real prior knowledge at all about planes or the Navy, I hit the web to do some online research to start gathering design ideas for my piece.

It’s really interesting to take a fresh look at something you’ve never really looked at closely before. I discovered that while many of the aircraft are similar, there are some fun variety of shapes, markings, and names for several of the planes he flew and after all my research, I can now confidently tell the difference between an A-3 Sky Warrior “Whale”, a F-9F Panther, and an F-11 Tiger.

Brain freshly loaded with all my new airplane knowledge, I spent the holiday weekend in the garage “studio” playing with dye painting and getting a good start on a couple of textile painting design ideas for the Navy quilt show.

Dye painting an image on fabric for my Navy Quilt Show entry

Overachiever that I am, I had to start 2 different pieces for this project.  The first design is a collage of various Naval Aviation imagery, all specific to Captain Bill’s Naval career. I drew out a rough sketch of the overall composition and then started dye-painting each element of the design.  While I don’t quite completely know what the final piece will look like yet, the major design elements are in place, so this piece is more pre-planned out.

The second design is much more spontaneous, and is going to be fun to watch how it develops and see what the end result will be.  For this one, I made a bunch of airplane stencils (all planes that Captain Bill has flown) and started the piece by stenciling several planes on the fabric with resist.  Then I sprayed a layer of burnt orange dye over the resist-painted stencils.

Resist-stenciled airplanes with burnt orange dye painted on top.

Stencils of airplanes that Captain Bill flew while in the Navy.

My plan is to alternate resist stenciling with painting more colors of dye, to achieve an overall interesting abstract design, made from images that are all representative of elements of Captain Bill’s Naval Aviator career.

I’ll continue to post images as the work progresses over the next few weeks.  Deadline is Oct. 1st, so they’ll be done before then!

Tags: art quilt design, direct fabric dye techniques, fabric painting, fabric stenciling, Navy airplanes, textile painting, thread tails, vapor trails