Old but New

I completed this quilt two years ago and had not put it on my blog because I had hoped to send it out to some shows. Unfortunately, because of my health issues, and being unable to work, I've not been able to afford to do that, so I finally decided to put it up here so that eveyone could enjoy it as much as I have.

It took me 18 months to complete this quilt. That's from it's the design, to finding all 23 white on white fabrics and 16 black on black fabrics for making the cranes. I actually spent 3 hours picking just the colors for the sunset background and the border. I'm sure the owner of the quilt store thought I would never get finished pulling fabrics and lining them up on the floor.

This close up shows the strip piecing of the background, all the strips were 1 1/2 inches wide. The sun was done the same way and then I put irridescent beads around the edge of the sun. I used a crystal bead for the cranes's eyes and then did black irridescent beads around the crystal to give them a lively look.

For the quilting in the sky I did wavy lines to suggest air movement.

I did free motion bamboo quilting in the border, using a variegate thread. I love it.




















There are over 150 pieces in the three cranes, appliqued together and onto the quilt background. I had to put batting between the birds and the background to block out the background colors and to help give dimension to the birds' feathers.




















Though it doesn't show up really well in the pictures, I also used colored pencils to help define the edges and shadows of the feathers, and to define the difference between the white parts of the cranes, like the head and the back.















The pebble effect quilting of the ground under the cranes' feet was done free motion, continuous line, with the pebbles being larger at the bottom and getting smaller the farther up I went, to give a sense of dimension to the "ground".

This quilt was truly a work of love, and had been talking to me in my head for over a year before I actually started gathering the supplies and actually working on it. I think this is one of my best pieces so far.