One of my top priorities this year was to do a monthly 12″x12″ journal quilt. I knew for January I wanted to do something wintry but had a hard time settling on a design. I spent weeks sketching skiing penguins but nothing stuck. Finally, I had a flash of inspiration while sorting through some hand-dyed fabric I made last summer. I decided to paint over a pastely-blue fabric that I hated.
I cut snowflakes from Freezer Paper, ironed them onto the fabric, and painted the whole piece with a mixture of Dye-Na-Flow and aloe gel (to keep the dye from seeping under the edges of the snowflakes).
I let it dry overnight, pulled off the freezer paper, and voila:

I re-used the snowflakes, laying them down in an overlapping pattern and painted the surface again using a slightly darker color:

I let it dry overnight, but unfortunately I did not iron it enough before I washed it. Or perhaps I should have heat-set the first layer, and washed off the dried aloe, before painting the second layer. In either case, some paint washed off:

I cut the fabric down to a 12.5″ square and started quilting:

Come back next week to see it quilted and bound!