Jean's Artful Spirit

"Art is the conveyance of spirit by means of matter". Salvador de Madariaga 1886-1978 Creating art quilts, drawing and painting feeds my creative spirit. My goal here is to share my joy of the spirit of creativity with all who visit.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

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.

5 Comments:

At 10:30 AM, Blogger Linda Teddlie Minton said...

Jeanne, this is really beautiful, I'm so glad you finally got to show it on your blog. Besides all the piecing of the fabrics, one of my favorite aspects is the way your quilting line of the leaves at bottom encroach into the pebbled foreground. Thanks for sharing this with us!

 
At 11:33 AM, Blogger Norma Schlager said...

It's a lovely quilt. I Love all your quilting and the details. I hope you get to enter in something. If not. I hope you have a great place to display it in your home.

 
At 9:13 PM, Blogger Christine Thresh said...

Jean,
This is such a beautiful quilt. The small details make it so rich. A person could study it for hours. I do hope you will be able to display it in public somehow.

 
At 10:43 PM, Blogger Carole said...

Oh-h-h-hhhh, beautiful.... I love your quilting!! And when I read the details going into this piece, yes, I can see, a labour of love!
I join the others in hoping you will get to display it it, so many facets on the surface to enjoy!
Thank you so much for sharing.

 
At 6:37 AM, Blogger Jeanne Turner McBrayer said...

This is a lovely quilt. I especially like the quilting of the cranes- beautiful detail.

 

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