Interwoven Lives--My Latest Art Quilt

Today is Reveal Day in my Internet art quilting group, The Material Mavens.  The theme this time was Interwoven.  I decided to print the names of all our members on silk ribbons and then weave them together, such that all the names were visible.  I put a fusible product on the back of each ribbon, after it was printed, and then worked on the weaving.  This was quite a challenge!  I had printed the names at either the right or left sides or in the middle, thinking then it would make the weaving easier.  Not so!  Despite that, getting the ribbons right, without obscuring any name took me several hours.

Once I finally had a design that suited me, I carefully moved each ribbon onto the turquoise silk background fabric.  Once all the ribbons were in place, I fused down the ribbons.  The background fabric is recycled silk from a second hand store's collection of blouses!  I bought quite a few 100% silk blouses and now love using old fabric!

This quilt as depicted here is actually slightly changed from the first one I posed!  I wasn't happy with the original binding, and so I substituted another. I actually used a tie-belt from a lovely silk dress my mother had made for me some 20 or 30 years ago.  The fabric is lovely and the dress is perfect still, but unfortunately I have outgrown it!  I'm sure this fabric will reappear in a quilt someday--its lovely flower and butterfly pattern doesn't show here, but I do like the slight contrast with the background and the way the binding defines the edges.

Another change in this quilt is some added hand quilting.  At first I simply "echo quilted" around the weaving, but the corners and edges looked too empty.  So I hand-quilted circles, some alone and some over-lapping.

You can see all the Interwoven quilts--a superb group this time!--on our blog, which can be found at http://thematerialmavens.blogspot.com/