The Reef

The Reef
30" x 40"

About a month ago I was asked to create a piece to hang in Representative Alan  Austerman's office in Juneau.  Very exciting, because it was my first commission, and because of where it will hang.  They looked at the pictures on my blog and decided that they wanted one with similar colors to the quilt on my header, and specified the size of 30" x 40".

The background is pieced-first by sewing strips together, then I cut squares from the resulting fabric.  I did 3 different strip sets- one for the forground, one for the mid section, and one for the water.  The fish and crabs were printed with blocks that I carved, and Daniel Smith water soluble printing ink. I carved a second, smaller crab so they appeared more distant.  I cut them out and fused them to the background.  The seaweed was stitched on tulle layered with angelina fiber and water soluble stabilizer.  I shaped the rocks using freezer paper, then used an invisible stitch to apply them to the quilt, with various ribbons tucked behind for more seaweed.  Finally, I added more embellishments with buttons, beads and hand dyed pearl cotton.  I love the little beaded jelly fish.

Detail

Foreground Detail

Every Day

I am trying to accomplish something every single day-before I go to work at 1.  This morning I fused Angelina fiber onto misty fuse, cut strips with my shaped rotary cutter(the word escapes me right now), cut out petals and fused them to this 6" x 4" piece that I previously printed a baby sparrow.   I don't know where I go from here, but eventually all of these little things become a quilt.

Soaring

This is another of my Arctic Tern quilts.  I carved away the background on the block on this since the last tern quilt that I posted.  The clouds are angelina fiber fused to the quilt.  This piece is 12" x 9.5".

Arctic Terns

Another completed small quilt.  The clouds are angelina and I put a layer of purple organza over the top of this.  I have tried a couple of other pieces with angeling clouds.  On those I fused the clouds down, over seams, which didn't work out so well.  I am happy with this.  Todays progress has not gone so well.  My machine does not  like something in the combination of a piece I was trying to quilt today.  The machine was skipping stitches.  I rethreaded the top and the bottom and changed the needle, trying a larger size.  Can't figure it out.  I tried stitching on another piece, no skipped stitches on that but I am just not in the groove today or something.  Better quit before I destroy something.  I really don't like to take out quilting stitches.