Circles of Hope and Joy – 2020.02.10

Here is my newest art quilt. It’s for a new exhibition by the Fibre Art Network titled “Threads of Hope”. All the pieces in this exhibit will be the same size – 18″ wide by 36″ high. Each art piece will have a piece of Kona Rich Red fabric entering anywhere on the left edge at 3″ width and exiting anywhere on the right edge at 3” in width. The artworks will be hung at staggered heights, matching up the red “thread”, so that the red will appear to flow from piece to piece.

This is the exhibit overview from the exhibit organizers: “Threads of Hope is an exhibition exploring our hope, longing and desire for the future of the world.  In this exhibit FAN artists express world issues that are meaningful to them.  The art pieces flow from one to the other with a ‘thread of hope’ connecting them, thus completing a line of artists, joining forces to improve our world.“

I started working on this piece in November then had to set it aside to work on other projects with more immediate deadlines. I selected fabrics that coordinated with the mandatory red fabric, focusing on bright, saturated colors with some white and black prints to add contrast.

I used some of my favorite techniques to construct it. I drew my design on freezer paper, cut the freezer paper apart and ironed each piece to the back of the fabric. I cut the fabric around the freezer paper templates, adding 1/4″ seam allowances. I reassembled the pattern by overlapping the seam allowances and using the freezer paper to hold them together.  Working from the back, I stitched in the gap between the paper templates.  Then from the front, I trimmed each seam allowance very close to the stitching.  This leaves raw edges, which will later be covered with bias tape.  This was a far as I got in November.

At the end of January, I resumed work on this project. I fused the skinny black bias tape over the horizontal seams, and stitched it in place. Then I layered the quilt, and quilted the horizontal wavy lines. The next step was to add the colored bias tape around the circles.

Then came the difficult part – quilting concentric circles. I started from the outside edge of each circle and echoed in. I periodically checked the accuracy of my circular quilting with freezer paper circles and/or dinner plates.

I finished the edges with a facing, turned entirely to the back. Here is my finished piece. It’s titled ‘Circles of Hope and Joy‘.

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Thanks for stopping by. Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative and inspirational projects.

• Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
• Love Laugh Quilt Monday Making