Art Quilt

My art quilt is finally finished!

I wish I had a plain wall to hang it on.  But, that wallpaper will be gone someday.  Until then, it is what it is.

HOW MY ART QUILT CAME TO BE
It all began sometime in 2012.  Text fabrics were in their early stages of showing up in quilted items.  I immediately was drawn to them (and still am).  But I couldn’t find much locally and online shopping required a minimum of a half yard or more.  I didn’t want that much at the time.  That could quickly add up to big $$ that I didn’t have.  I wanted a largish variety of text prints.

Being a scrapbooker, there was more of an endless array of papers with words on them.  So I ordered several yards of Miracle Fabric.  I began printing my own text fabrics on my printer for a quilt.  Even then I began running out of different text papers.  I didn’t want to keep using the same ones over and over.  I had those four rows done when I decided it was never going to get four more rows.  I set it aside.

I had printed the little girl you see in this section for a postcard.  I printed her twice.  I made the postcard and mailed it.  The extra little girl got pushed around on my table for awhile.  I didn’t want to loose her so I set her on top of this quilt (that was probably never going to get finished).

Well, wasn’t she cute on there.  If I ever get this quilt made, I think I’ll sew her onto it somewhere.  Then I thought, she would need another little friend on it somewhere else.  

I processed that idea for awhile until finally concluding that I was going to switch  my plan from a regular quilt to an art quilt.  And turn it into an ephemera collage art quilt.  It took my little pea brain a long time to figure out how to accomplish this. 

When I got the itch to sew again, I wanted to finish this art quilt first.  I finally figured out how to get to the finished quilt.

I first decided to quilt the blocks before adding the ephemera pieces.

Not all of the blocks are printed miracle fabric.  Some are regular cotton text fabrics.  But the majority are printed on my Epson Ink Jet printer.

With the quilting done, I decided to also bind it before spinning it round and round in my machine appliquéing the ephemera.  There was no need to leave that for last.  Binding it first would save me the trouble of raveling edges during appliquéing.

It was finally time to applique the ephemera!

There are 45 pieces of ephemera printed, backed with Wonder Under, cut out and raw edge appliqued onto the quilt.  I did not make them recently.  They had been pinned to the quilt for all the years it lay dormant.

My daughter looked at this art quilt and said “this is so you”.  And it is.  It’s full of things I like, things I find interesting and things that speak to me.  I have a bicycle postage stamp that I need to print and add to my quilt.  I like that I can continue to add to it if I choose to.

The quilt measures 41” X 55”

I’m really happy to have this quilt finished and I’m really happy with how this art quilt turned out.

It’s a little wavy on the bottom in this photo.  It was hanging oddly on the stick across the top.  It lays nice and straight and flat now that I’ve fixed that little mystery. 

I really love paper collage and I’m really enjoying this fabric collage.

TADA!