It's time once again to make small 12 x 12 quilts for the SAQA auction. I love trying things a bit different for this, often in preparation for a bigger quilt, but this time it turned out the be the other way around- I did the big quilt first, and am now using up leftover bits for the auction quilt.
I haven't blogged about the bigger quilt though, since it was for a show with rules about that, so it's all new here! For these smaller quilts, I started with two pieces of already quilted fabric that had been trimmed off of the bigger quilt during the squaring up. It's kind of hard to see in the first picture, but if you look at the second picture, you can see it's two different pieces. Since they were already quilted, I attached them together using bias tape. I had enough of these quilted pieces to make three small quilts, and each one is slightly different.
To back up a little bit, both the top and bottom sections started as white polyester fabric that I painted with latex house paint in blue-grey-purple. The pieces were then quilted (again all as part of something much larger), the bottom to look like plank flooring and the top in some random fillers meant to feel like wind and the outdoors. Of course since they didn't make bias tape in the right color, I had to paint it too.
For these smaller pieces, I then designed my composition in illustrator (that's my silhouette looking out the window) and printed it on freezer paper. I then quilted around everything in the picture (window frames and person), and tore off the paper.
Next, I used my silhouette cutter to cut the silhouette of the person out of adhesive foil so I could use it as a stencil. I used my silver, blue, purple, and black Shiva paintsticks to shade in the silhouette and then removed the foil.
Next I mixed up some more of my latex paint and painted in the window frames in a darker shade than the background. In the picture just below you can see the stitched outline of the window frame and then in the subsequent picture you can see I've painted it purple. It didn't really matter about going over the lines into the window because as you can see in the third picture, my last step was to cut out the window panes to give an openwork feel. I sealed the cut edges with my soldering iron so there'd be no fraying (thus the polyester fabric).
Here they are all faced and finished, one will be donated to the SAQA auction and the other two will just be for sale. Thanks to Mike for taking the pictures. It was fun to use up the extra bits cut off from another project and I'm anxious to show you guys the bigger quilt in a few months! My goal was for the pieces too evoke thoughtfulness and reflection. Maybe hopefulness or calm, or even anxiety or sadness.
