Flowers Kissing Air - A Collaborative Art Quilt

"Flowers Kissing Air," 15" x 15", by Therese O'Connor and Pam Geisel, Winter/Spring 2020

Back at the beginning of the year I saw a post from a woman who creates art under the name DuchessFrouFrou, who created a group called CoLaborArt Quilts and was organizing a collaborative quilt project for this year. She picks a theme, sends hand-dyed fabric to each participant, coordinates who the second artist is. Each participant starts one project but finishes a different one. The final size of all of the quilts are 15" x 15" and they are sent to her to arrange to have them exhibited together.

The photo at the top of the post is the finished piece, which I finished. This photo is the part that my collaborator did then sent to me. She also got pink hand-dyed fabric but one of hers had a stripy feel to it.

She did some curved piecing for the background which always impresses me because while I've done a little curved piecing, it seems difficult for me. She also made some cool 3D flowers. But there needed to be something in the center and I felt some pressure to find a way to add an element that added to the piece without being too dominant.

I looked over the sketches and notes that she'd sent and she said that walking in nature was sacred to her. When looking at the piece the pink and white striped part near the bottom reminded me of a river so I thought I'd put a bridge going from the dark foreground to the flowers. But not just any bridge, a red, curved, Japanese-style bridge.

I liked how the red works with the pink and also how the shape of the bridge allows it to go down into the flowers. The bridge is fused and I sewed down the raw edges during the quilting process. I also added some small pink flowers on the left side of the bridge although I didn't make them 3D.

For the quilting I used a meandering free motion stitch in the light blue sky and also over the green and blue leaves since they were fused and I wanted to make sure they stayed in place.

Here are the 3D flowers that Therese made. She also did the hand beading.

You can read about the piece that I started here.

Have You Heard? The World is Love - A Collaborative Art Quilt

"Have You Heard? The World is Love," 15" x 15" by Pam Geisel & and Vicki Conley, Winter/Spring 2020 

Back at the beginning of the year I saw a post from a woman who creates art under the name DuchessFrouFrou, who created a group called CoLaborArt Quilts and was organizing a collaborative quilt project for this year. She picks a theme, sends hand-dyed fabric to each participant, coordinates who the second artist is. Each participant starts one project but finishes a different one. The final size of all of the quilts are 15" x 15" and they are sent to her to arrange to have them exhibited together.

The photo at the top of the post is the finished piece, which I started. This photo is the part that I did. I got two pieces of hand-dyed fabric and they were both pink. One was a hot pink that had light pink dots on it and the other had parts that were pale and other parts that were almost purple.

The theme was "Sacred" and after some thought, I decided that the earth is sacred but since the fabric was pink I decided to make the earth in the shape of a heart. This was back in February, so I could have also been influenced by Valentine's Day. I intentionally didn't make the heart shape very distinct in case the second artist wanted to go another direction.

I fused the continent shapes to the background and sewed around the raw edges. Because the background was a pale pink I used pieces of the fabric to make the shape of the heart by "blending" random shapes of fabric from light to dark. These are fused but I didn't sew them down since I usually do that during the quilting process and someone else was going to do the quilting.

I did get to name the piece and I used a Beatle's song title with a slight change. The song is "Have You Heard? The Word is Love." My title is "Have You Heard? The World is Love." I think the Beatles would be OK with that interpretation.

You can read about the piece that I finished here.

Stained Glass Window Art Quilt

"All Saints' Corpus Christi Stained Glass Window," 38" x 47", made by Pam Geisel, Jan. 2020

Earlier this year I was contacted by the All Saints' Episcopal Church in Corpus Christi, Texas. They were hosting a diocese convocation and wanted a quilted banner based from a photo of one of their stained glass windows.

Working from the photo provided, I removed the horizontal design elements near the bottom of the piece so I would have a place to put their logo.

Then I pulled out batik fabrics that I thought were close in color to the stained glass, which I cut to the correct shape and fused to a white background fabric.

I also fused the letters, which I stitched around the raw edges. I basted the quilt top with batting and a backing fabric and it was time to start quilting.

Luckily I already had a lot of black fusible bias tape which I used to make the "leading" in the window. I fused it to where the different color fabrics met and then sewed down both sides with black thread. The tricky part was the order which it was fused and sewn so I could get as many raw edges underneath other pieces of the bias tape.

I did the leading on the interior wings of the dive first then I covered all of the light purple dove fabric with a purple tulle that had some silver sparkles on it. (You can see them when they're on top of the black bias tape in the photo above). I wasn't sure how well the tulle worked until I stepped back and then I think it really added to the stained glass effect.

The binding was a knife-edge facing and I added two sleeves and a stick with some cording so they would be able to carry the banner during the convocation.