If you got to Doll U one day early you had an extra class to choose from. I went with Judy Skeel's Altered Fabric. I figured that it'd be fun to play with dyes, paints and heat guns. :-) These two are my marbled silks. Pretty interesting and a lot of fun to do. I could have done more of this.
Step one: use shaving cream and add little drops of All-Purpose Ink. Step two: take a toothpick or something equally pointy and swirl up and down. Step three: Once you've made your design lay your piece of fabric on it. Easy peasy.
Next I played with Dye-na-Flow paint which is thin enough that it shouldn't change the hand of the fabric. Then I used a dragonfly rubber stamp with Lumiere paint. It's metallic and available in gorgeous colors. I used a bit of salt on the Dye-na-Flow to create the little bits of spots. A technique that I've used in the past with silk-painting.
Finally we played with free motion embroidery. Here's the piece that I made. A thin cotton is the base then I layered bits of cut ribbon, angelina film, lame' fabric, and fibers. This was covered with a piece of silk organza that I was saving from a project at design school many years ago. It was all in a machine embroidery hoop and then just random free motion embroidery on it. My stitches weren't great but it didn't really matter because the fibers underneath were doing all of the hard work. And if you notice I apparently was really into dragonflies that day. I didn't see this until after someone pointed it out to me, but I have a dragonfly in the piece made of fibers. I was curious what would happen if I shot the heat-gun over it. It melted a few holes in the organza. But I wasn't thrilled with that look on this piece so I didn't continue playing with it. All in all, a very fun day spent playing with fabrics and fibers.