Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Art quilt "Holiday Cheer"

Now that most of my quilting friends know that I am making a series of fiber art nest quilts, they bring me all kinds of things that they would normally throw away.  This quilt started with some scraps that were green and red that one of those friends had given me.  I made the sketch quite a while ago, and decided to get the quilt going right before Christmas.

What I'd like to show you in this blog is how I audition materials on my design wall and how I stabilize the top so it can support the weight of the nest.

I'm showing you the nest materials that I picked to go with the scraps I received, the blue material I picked for the upper background, and how the background looks after adding some organza on the top to tone down the brightness of the blue fabric.  Our brains are wired for curiosity.  So I like to leave some details in my art quilts that you can only see if you get up close, like the sky in this quilt.


Nest materials
Building the background

Material for the top background

The bird was made as a separate piece, then sewn to the background before the nest was built.  My granddaughters told me this had to match the bird I made for a previous nest quilt.  So I dug through my materials and found the pattern.  I painted the face with both colored pencils and inktense pencils, finishing it off with fabric medium.

Bird added

Here is where I want to show you all the stuff I put on the back to support the artwork on the top.  I laid down 2 layers of batting to stuff the bird and it's hat.  And to support the nest, I added a mid-weight tear away stabilizer, which I trimmed after sewing. Seeing the innards is like looking at how a fancy bridal dress is made.



I should have taken a picture of the pile of scraps that I received, but you can see in the photos below that they were bright and tiny.  I wanted to cover them up with a bit of shiny red tulle, but decided against that and instead went with a gray tulle.   After quilting, the top was finished off with a facing.  I hope you like it!


Red tulle on top

Gray tulle on top




Holiday Cheer by Joanne Adams Roth

1 comment:

  1. The gray tulle looks so much better than the red and who would have thought that??? It is such a happy piece. . .course, red to is like lime green is to you!--Terry

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