Don't Faint! I actually made an art quilt!

Yup, I did! The theme for the current show at my local art association was Animals, and I’d be a monkey’s uncle if I didn’t make a birdie quilt just for this show! I took my own advice, and used one of my palettes (no, not the new one…the cool one…I’ve got to fuse a bunch of the jewel fabrics and I didn’t have time!) Choosing a limited palette really helps me focus, and I love how the red & chartreuse pop against each other, so I wanted to get that happening.

I really didn’t think too much about this one…actually, the most thought went into the actual construction. I wanted to give more stiffness to this, so I quilted the birds & the roots with the fabric fused to batting, and then I fused the whole thing to a piece of peltex (the stuff that stiffens baseball cap brims) and quilted the rest. I LOVE how it came out, there’s more dimension, almost like trapunto…I only wish I’d quilted the birds on the peltex too. Anyway, the whole thing stands up by itself:

and I’m sure it would develop a sway back in time, hanging it is a breeze – that little loop took me all of 5 minutes to make – this is a trick I picked up from Laura Wasilowski’s new book Fuse & Tell Journal Quilts, which is awesome! Before i read this book, I was making little quilts, finishing them with triangles at the corners and then tucking peltex in under the corners and gluing a sawtooth hanger to the back: But when I made my little houses, I realized I could quilt through peltex, but I hadn’t really thought through how to hang quilted peltex until Laura – she’s a GENIUS!

Let see what I can get done this weekend! I’ll leave you with a few detail shots…I’m not totally happy with these, but I had to get it to the gallery!