"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.