Valentines Quilt 2017

"Holding Hands through life"  16" X 18" 2017

Let me introduce this year's Valentine quilt. I make a V-day quilt every year we've been married. To mark the miracle of finding each other. Some are very small, some are bed sized, all have a heart on them.

It all started with a visit to the National Gallery of Art during the Christmas holidays. I studied and wrote, but haven't published, an article on cropping. I took my photo, a close-up of Picasso's The Lovers and printed it onto fabric.  Then gathered fabrics...

I find it very interesting to see fabrics in yardage then see the areas a person chose to cut out for their artwork, don't you?
Two of the above fabrics are hand dyed as it a third from which I cut the music "Romance"
I love the little old valentines to the left!
I used pinking shears to cut out just the one I wanted

Gathering the five fabrics I wanted to use, I laid them on the table deciding arrangement, proportion, composition, etc.

I wanted to tell a story of long time love, growth (leaves), gesture (holding hands), loving words and interplay of every day life.

Cut some strips, some accent pieces and start to compose. I enjoy a diagonal line so they elements lead your eye from top left down to bottom right while they engage  and balance each other.

Note the tape. I do not like glue or fusible so I taped the elements til I could hand or machine stitch them down. I used the Oliver Twist hand dyed 30 weight cotton thread for that.

I just hand stitched the little poem

I like the loft one gets by not using fusible plus the chemicals  are not nice.

Note the spiral stitch holding the painting in place. I used Printed Treasures prepared fabric for printing, and it's thick. Too hard to hand sew. I love this stitch and it's not on any other Bernina machine. It's so dynamic with the oliver twist thread, right?



Note the pinkish hand dye with hand writing on it isn't real words!!! It looks like real words in beautiful script.

Note, it's hard for me to cut into one of a kind hand dyed fabric, but my phrases this year are "Use it" from last year, and "Follow your heart" which means I just let myself cut into yardage, in an area I felt would work best. Whew! That was not easy, but very satisfying.

 After strips were sewn on, and most elements sewn down, I placed a heart, cut from a sheer where I liked it. Again I wanted to see the heart above the element so no fusible. I stitched it down with free motion spirals and YLI gold metallic thread, then finished it off with tiny gold rocaille beads. Most of the appliqued elements have raw, pinked edges which might fray and lift a bit over time. I like that. 

 Lovely. 
Music plays a large part in our lives, writing in mine, communication is vital across the elements.

 The different fabrics interact with words, script, color that blends. The quilted free motion spiral stands for eternity. I quite love the gold thread and uneven spirals quilted on the sheer... click to see details. 

 Quilting is always a big decision. I did a lot of embroidery before layering to quilt, so I only wanted to add some stability to the piece and dimension. I use my walking foot for stability around main elements, then free motion foot to draw hearts, leaves and spirals. There are several hearts quilted in but pretty subtle. Note the little hand embroidery flowers and crosses (kisses) hand stitched along the bottom of this element.

I used gold balls along the leaf veins, and shell flowers with same gold centers. Growth.
I broke some rules of design in the making of this quilt but followed my heart. For instance it might not be apparent but the hand holding photo is almost center. Use of four flower beads breaks to rule of odd numbers. There is the red/orange color in the picasso image not repeated except in the oliver twist thread spirals. That shade should not work with pink.

I wanted to float the elements too, but didn't want it to get larger, so I decided to do it with a wide binding. In order to keep the writing consistent, I had to cut the binding from different angles and put it on the four edges one at a time.

I wasn't sure I could get one done this year... but this was finished in two days.
And I think it represents our year. 
As a young woman I despaired of ever finding Mr Right. I dated a lot of Mr You Might Do's and "kissed a lot of frogs" and waited for Drew.

I have photos of a couple other V-day quilts under the label valentines
Linking to parties on my links page... thank you