New journal art quilt and SAQA auction news – 2017.09.25

I’ve been absent from my blog most of this month, partly because of some travel at the beginning of the month, and then because my computer crashed!  I was without a computer for a week or so while my husband recovered most of my data and loaded it on the new laptop.

In a couple of days, I’ll be heading to Lac Le Jeune BC for the annual retreat of the Fibre Art Network.  As usual we will have an art exchange.  All participants are invited to create a journal size quilt (8.5 by 11 inches) inspired by this year’s retreat theme, ‘Into the Wilderness’.

My initial thoughts about wilderness involved forest or jungle images, but after scrolling through my photo collection, I decided to use this photo from my trip to Inuvik in January this year.  One of the definitions I found for wilderness is ‘a wild and natural area in which few people live’, which seemed to describe the Arctic to me.

Arrived at Inuvik airport at 1:30pm – just in time to see the sunrise!

I edited the photo to eliminate the runway sign, and I cropped it to remove the window frame.  The result was more desolate looking landscape, but with wonderful sunrise colors.

I printed the photo onto fabric that I had cut to 9.5 x 12.5 inches.  This included an 1/8″ white border.  I cut a piece of white felt to 8.5 x 11 inches, and fused it to the back of the printed photo with Misty Fuse.  Then I quilted through those two layers, using several rayon threads for an icy look.  I pulled all the threads to the back but did not tie or bury any of the ends.  (Excuse the bad lighting in the images below.)

I cut fabric for the back to 8.5 x 11 inches and fused it to the back, catching all the thread ends under the back.

Then I applied the facings using my standard facing technique, but with a couple of twists.  Because the felt was cut to the finished size and didn’t extend all the way to the edge, I didn’t need to trim the corners to reduce bulk.  I also fused the facings in place, rather than hand-stitching them.

Here’s my finished journal quilt, ‘Into the Arctic Wilderness’.

In other news,  I’m thrilled to say that my SAQA donation quilt, ‘Heron Reflected 2’, sold on the first day that bidding opened!   You can see the hundreds of donated art quilts here.  The ones with red borders have been sold.  The rest will be available for bidding through October 8th.