Sunday, October 23, 2011

"Sirenitas"

"Sirenitas" is an art quilt that took me a long time to complete for unkown reasons. Once I finished it I felt so attached to it that I was having a difficult time letting the quilt go, until I gave myself and ultimatum by setting a date and a time for this to be shipped to Pennsylvania. A long time friend of mine, Bety, is the owner of this art quilt that was so much fun to make and was in effect a learning process.
The image is from a Mexican Folk Art book and the process is a painted cloth, machine quilted and hand embroidered. I'm a big fan of Judy Coates Perez work and she has inspired me to explore painting on fabric.

Here we go:
I draw the image on white fabric using a fine mechanical pencil


To paint I used tsukineko and jacquard textile paint

Whole cloth almost ready to be stitched. I added a border using 1" wide rectangles of assorted batiks


Close up of art quilt

Art quilt painted and stitched using my longarm quilting machine. I also added some hand embroidery in certain areas





The quilt below won 1st Place at the CTQG 2011 Quilt Show in the art quilts category. I was thrilled!!
"Self Explanatory" 42" x 33"
Whole cloth painted with thickened dyes, free motion quilted with a longarm quilting machine, hand quilted and hand embroidered. I will post a picture of the back at some other time.

4 comments:

deanna7trees said...

you did a great job. outlining some areas in dark thread is very effective and I just love the border. I can see why it was hard to let go.

suzanengler said...

Love the process and the quilt. It makes me happy just looking at it!

Martha Tsihlas said...

Thank you for your kind comments!

Linda Teddlie Minton said...

Martha, I will echo Suzan above and say that this quilt makes me happy! The colors and forms are just gorgeous. And I am particularly interested in how you decided to do straight-line quilting across the pieced borders ... a counter-intuitive, but very effective design element. Your friend who has received it is very lucky.