Using Zentangle Patterns in Your Quilt Designs

So the new craze is adult coloring and it's not just for paper. We've been using Zentangle on quilts, where we will actually quilt the design of a Zentangle into a piece of fabric. I'm gonna be showing you just some techniques, so that way you can make your own little journal page using Zentangle. First of all, I've got a couple tools here. The tools that I've got are the Precise V5's, that you can buy in your local Walmart, Target, maybe Office Max, Staples, and I've got them in various colors. And I also have the Precise V7, because they're a little bit more exact as far as buying fine point. I've got some Sharpies that I brought along. I've got the fine point Sharpies, but I've also got the extra ultra fine point Sharpies. And all those are gonna be able to fill in some areas. In front of me, I have a paper towel and the reason I have this paper towel is before I go to fabric, I want to make my mistakes on this and I want to try and get the hang of what I'm doing. So the first thing that I might want to do is I'm going to experiment a little bit with just drawing. I used a paper towel that actually has a print that is punched into it. We don't want to use toilet paper on this because it's just a little bit too flimsy, but the paper towel is a great medium to use, because it's supposed to be so sturdy. And all I'm gonna do is I'm gonna follow the lines of the paper towel. And as I follow it, I'm thinking, you know, I might want to start filling it in with something. Also this is a great relaxation tool. And you just go so far and you make a decision about what you want to fill it in with. I'm gonna do a couple more here, just so that way I've got a little bit more area to play with. It doesn't even have to be exact because we're gonna be filling it in a little bit. And I think this one's gonna be kind of colorful. Do you see how nice that looks though? It's got a nice, bold look to it. I'm gonna use this Precise V5, and I'm just going to do some circles inside of that. We don't press too hard, we don't need to. We have to remember that the fabric is going to be very much the same type of composition as this paper towel. It's gonna move a little bit for us. That's why we're using this. Now with inside this one, I think I'm just gonna draw some lines and they don't even have to be a straight line. They can, it's kind of nice to have different textures. And then maybe what we're gonna do is, let's fill in a little couple areas here. We'll fill this in with orange and then it doesn't even, you don't have to have any rhyme or reason. So then once you feel like you're pretty confident with what you're doing, it's time to move on. And we start out with just a piece of, this is called a quilt sandwich. And what a quilt sandwiches is, is it's lower level, it's got batting in the middle, and then the top is fabric as well. And you could see that I've already quilted the design on this. Oftentimes what I'll do is I'll go to my long arm machine, I'll load on a big piece of fabric, and then I'll just quilt away and just have a great time quilting, doing new and different techniques maybe in it. Maybe it's just a little bit of an experiment, might be a practice run, and then I'll take it off the machine and I'll cut it into squares, and the square size will depend on what I want to use it for. Well, this piece here, I think I'm going to outline it in black and you literally will go over all of your stitching lines, and so it'll make everything stand out just a little bit more. Do you see how I'm just trying to make sure I stay right on that line? And again, you don't have to use the same color. I could have used a different color for each feather, and these are feathers that I'm doing right now. And this isn't something that you're going to accomplish in five or 10 minutes. This is meant to be relaxation technique that you use. Now inside each of these, I might want to do something different. I think what I'm gonna do is a little curlicue. So I'm gonna want to turn it around towards me because I just am able to do the curlicues a little bit easier. Any technique that you use for quilting, you can utilize on your Zentangle. Anything that you think is okay to put in your quilt, do it in pen on your Zentangle. This is also a great way to figure out exactly how you might want to quilt something. You could draw a picture and then just go and Zentangle it. So when this is all complete and I'm done with it, it's going to resemble something like this. I did one in red and blacks because I love red and blacks together. And with the white, and I filled in certain areas, and I really filled it in, as you can see right through here, and even around these areas, to make it a little bit more pronounced I wanted it to just really pop. Now, the next thing that I did was I took and I zigzagged around and I didn't want a zigzag the same color all the way around because I had alternated the colors through the Zentangle. So what I did was I zigzagged to a certain point and then I changed my color and went. And I'm gonna be truthful with you. This is a little tip that a lot of us quilters use that you might not think is right, but it sure is handy. Not all of threads covered the sandwich. So what I did was I took my handy dandy little black and I just filled in the areas that might not have been covered by the satin stitch, because a little bit will pop through. So then it looks very complete. I did the same thing with the red. The next thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to make a little button hole in here and then I'm gonna tie a little ribbon and I'm gonna make my first journal book. On the back, I have written, An Adventure in Zentangle on Fabric, 2016, with my name. That's gonna be the start of my book. And each time I add a new page to it, it's gonna be a new technique that I've used. So that way, if I'm ever thinking, Oh, what am I gonna do? What do I want to start with today? I can flip through my journal book and I can see a technique that maybe I've forgotten about. I can go back to it and I can start a new project using that technique. So I hope this has been helpful to you. It was very fun to do, and I hope that you find it very relaxing.