Chickenshack Quilt -- finished at last

The Chickenshack mini quilt is finished. 17x17" with a new binding. It is the backing fabric, wrapped around the edges and sewn to the front with hem stitches. This means that backing and binding are one piece. The binding is a little crooked, but binding is something I'm learning at the moment. This piece is 100% hand sewn, printed, painted, and quilted. I'm thinking of selling it, but I'm not so sure, after all it was my first piece of this technique. Moreover, it was fused which made it awfully hard to do the hand quilting. Recently I read that the fusing material may create problems on the long run like a change of colors. I guess I'll try a similar one, not fused, for sale. It looks a little grey in the photos, but the cloth is dark blue and white. It suits the quilt better than it shows in the pics.

A step into the unknown

Very often in a life as an artist we may come to road crossings without sign. A trodden path leads somewhere; we have decided to leave them, but we can never be sure about the meaning of what we do, neither about the result. And this is our choice.
I fused this thing. I can rip off the printed parts and make new compositions; I'm just trying to follow the idea of concentric squares. What do you think can be done to improve -- or rather: save -- this experiment?
I found that for the first time I started struggling with art. I used to drop what did not work. Let me tell you frankly: I don't like this thing at all. It is completely different from what I imagined.

Flowers for the Ladies: Peonies, Poppies, Pansies
We took a walk today. The flowers are overwhelming, all kinds with "p": peonies, pansies, poppies, and piris.

Fusing the spell

The letters are fixed by ironing and dyed with diluted acrylics. Not as brillant as I was hoping they would be. Then I fused them onto WU, cut the spell in stripes and fused them onto the gown.






I had considered to cut the gown up and resew it into a t-shape like the Joseph's Coat, but it did not allow me to.


So I fixed the spell along the edges. And I will have to sew all this because fused parts tend to separating from the base.
I let the spell run around the space, so it is turnt upside down at the lower edge and makes a 90°-turn like it was used on ancient inscription stones in Scandinavia.

I wrote that tradition in Estonia was oral. There was an exemption of wood cut runes, the calendar system; it went back more than 10200 years, back to the time when the land emerged from the water through postglacial events similar to those happening in Canada.

Fused and quilted

I feel great in this "new" piece. My husband took the photo. He says Hello to all the kind ladies in the blogosphere. And off he dashed into the Marvel world. -- Yes, our living room is raspberry red.

Young goats and a puddle of blood

Joseph's brothers took the blood-stained coat back as an evicence of his death. They killed a young goat for the purpose. Here, the chosen goat rests by a water with a weird colour, taken from a fabric in Japanese style.
I cut a paper stencil for the goat and tried to transfer acrylic paint on the cloth. That was not all that satisfying. So I cut out another silhouette and fused it to the red background. This cloth turned out to be very fringy, even when fused. So the result is not quite what I wanted it to be.

This morning, my little parcel came, containing my Windsor & Newton Gouaches. And the bill. 42 Euro = about 56 $. Outch. But the pink and purple are very close to the desired shades. And there is gold, a beautiful spring green, deep cool blue, black, red. Another boxing day!
I'll start saving from now on. Because my mind is eased.

Olive tree from Tuscany, I took this picture in 2002 in Pieve d'Elici near Lucca. Hello, Darlene, this one is for you!

Fusing is great

Today I tried the fusing method. Very helpful! Melody gives so much advice on her blog how to do these things. I cannot look back on years of quilting experience, as many of you can. To you, this must be looking like a kid's work. But this is how I feel: Playful and full of joy about my experiments. I put it out on the corridor to take the photo. I'm doing all the quilting by hand, because Joseph's sister did not have a sewing machine. Well, she did not have Wonder Under either.