Melissa's Mini Art Quilt - The Reveal

Melissa got her art quilt in the mail today!  So, after all this teasing, we have the reveal...

Detail of beading

Detail of the whole constellation.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with it.  I spent many more hours beading than I had planned, but I like the gently sparkling effect the dark blue, black, and purple seed beads give.  I wasn't going for a direct copy of the night sky, but rather an impression of the sky.  Let's hope Melissa likes it!

"Here's Looking at You"... Or, "Here's Looking at Melissa"

Again, another week goes by with me silent.  I fear this may have been a poor semester to choose to start a blog.  But as I am doing this for myself alone, and the Quilt List looms ever over me, I press on.

Tonight I completed my Mini Art Quilt!  It is all wrapped, packed, and addressed, ready to be mailed to Melissa tomorrow.  For tonight I leave you with some detail shots of the embellishing, which I admit took me many more hours than I had anticipated.  But I ask you, is there such a thing as too many stars in the sky?

The constellation, Leo.  Beaded with black river shell bead frames, pink Swarovski crystal, and glass bugles and seed beads.

Beaded starburst of black glass bugles and black freshwater pearls.

Detail of quilting, done in multiple colors to suggest various nebula.

Hidden Among the Stars

I know I've been quiet all week, but I have been working on a few projects, the MAQ among them.  This semester, in addition to my full time job, I'm also teaching a college history course, and the first week back was a bit rougher than I had anticipated.  As for the art quilt....

While looking for inspiration, I found some great bead frames in my jewelry stash.  Dark grey-black star shaped shells, with a hole in the center for another bead.  I knew they would have to be worked into Melissa's quilt and decided that I would use them to form the constellation Leo, with a light pink crystal in the center of each one.  I decided to then "hide" the constellation among other beads, so you would have to search for them in the quilt.   

One of my inspiration images.

After getting the front together, and knowing what I wanted to do with the beadwork, I tried to figure out what to do with the borders.  I considered borders on just two sides, either opposite or adjacent, but couldn't seem to make a decision.  So I did what I always do in that moment and asked my husband for artistic advice.  When I explained that my inspiration was the night sky and how I was going to bead in the constellation, he asked if I had something grey, that would look like stone.  His idea was to make the borders appear to be the walls in an astronomical observatory, as if you were standing inside it looking out.  I clearly married a brilliant man. 

I wanted to post some more progress shots, but find I only have one to share.  I must have been too wrapped up in quilting to take more last weekend! 

Quilted & bound.

I did manage to get the constellation beaded in this week, along with some more stars beaded into the top quarter.  I'm hoping to finish all the beading this afternoon.  Wish me luck!

Melissa's Mini Art Quilt

I mentioned in a previous post that next on my list is a mini art quilt for a swap on Craftster.  When I first signed up for the swap, I was so exited about it.  My partner is a lovely lady named Melissa, whom I have swapped with several times before, and whom I adore crafting for.  Now, I was even more excited.  When I got her questionnaire full of information, and some inspiration art quilts that she Wisted, I started having all kinds of fantastic quilt visions...  Too many in fact.   

I ended up with a long list of ideas, none of which felt right. So I decided to put it on the back burner for a while, and let the ideas stew.  A week or so later, I found a project in an October 2009 copy of Quilter's World that set me on my path again.  It was an autumn themed bargello quilt, with borders on only two sides that were made up of pieced maple leaf blocks.  It provided the inspiration, but it was far too large to use the actual pattern.

I knew that while Melissa loves autumn, I wanted to make her something that could hang in her house year round.  I really wanted to take advantage of the color gradation factor inherent in bargello quilts, so I came up with a list of 5 themes that I thought she would like; Night, Dawn, Sunset, Meadow, and Ocean.  I then sent her a weird cryptic little message asking for her gut reactions to a few things.  Based on those I decided to go with something based on the night sky.  Perhaps a little Aurora Borealis...

Here's what I accomplished last weekend:

Colors all laid out together.

Stripped units, ready to be cut down.

All sliced up and ready to be arranged

Under 2 feet square is a small space to do 15 strips!

All squared up.

Today I managed to get the borders on, the whole thing quilted, and bound.  It's amazing how fast you can quilt, when the item has to be under 2' square.

Teasers: Alison's Quilt Update & Upcoming Project

I've *nearly* completed the binding on this one...  just a few feet of hand sewing left, and it will be ready to wrap up and ship.  Not too bad, considering the wedding is in 29 days!

Here are some teaser pictures today, featuring the free motion quilting.

In other news, I've been working a bit on a mini-art quilt, for a swap on Craftster.org.  I'm so lucky because I get to swap with a great friend (not to mention my only follower on this blog!) in this round.  The rules state that the art quilt must be no bigger than 24" x 24", and must be shipped out by September 7th.  Eeek!  It can include traditional piecing, applique, embroidery, beading, charms and other 3D embellishments.  So far I have my front completed.  And while tossing and turning last night I decided how I'm going to quilt it!  More to come...