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.