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"Surprise in the Midst of Drought" is what I named this quilt
Last Tuesday, November 15th, was the second "reveal day" for the international art quilting group of which I am a member, The Material Mavens. Our first theme was Harmony; this second one was Surprise. I based my little 12"x12" quilt on a lovely discovery I made on September 16, the day after our first reveal. It was still hot, still summer here in Texas, so I set out on a walk very early in the morning. Just a block from my house, I saw in the middle of a patch of weeds some little wild flowers blooming. We'd not had rain for months! How could they have survived? I thought about these flowers while I walked, and then realized that they could be turned into a quilt on our new theme, Surprise. So I went back home for my camera and took several photos. The one I liked best was this one:
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I used batiks for most of the dead weeds and also for the flowers' living ones and for the flowers themselves. A fusible web was added to the fabrics before I sliced them into various lengths and widths, and then I fused them to the background fabric, which was a left over piece from the fabric I painted for the Three Boys quilt--the beach fabric. I couched two different yarns to for more weeds, and after I cut free hand some flowers and leaves, I appliqued them by machine with a tiny zig zag stitch. Then I used an embroidery running stitch and embroidery floss for the quilting.
I will post on our Material Mavens blog some additional "process" photos, and more details about the construction of this little quilt. But here are a few photos of the quilt in process:
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| fusing the first weeds down to the background |
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| couching the gold yarn for more weeds |
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| couching the brown, "hairy" yarn |
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| appliqueing by machine the flowers and leaves |
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| a close-up of the embroidery stitches used for quilting this piece |
