Garden

Let me introduce you to Garden. She is a 12" square wall quilt. On the front there are appliquéd bits of green solids - I am not sure what kind - and Kona white. She is densely quilted with an ivory white Superior Threads King Tut thread.

I made the stem motifs on small pieces of white before I was sure how this little quilt would emerge. So I then arranged them and pieced in the rest. In hindsight I could have arranged it all on a single white background but that was not my process.



In fact, this quilt was really hard to make for me. It is part of a challenge in a group called Four-in-Art set up by my internet friend Elizabeth who blogs at the Occasional Piece - Quilt! When she mused about the group I joined but when the group adopted "art" in their name, well then suddenly it became hard as I quilt, I don't do capital A art. But I am giving it a go anyway.

The challenge was to make a 12" square quilt inspired by the theme Queen Anne's Lace. I have a lot of Queen Anne's Lace in my garden on the coast and enjoyed it all summer.



But as a quilt, well, I just put it all off until it was due - and the due date would be today. The challenge group does not share as they go and for me that is perhaps even more challenging as I like the energy and feedback from my internet friends as I move through the quilting process. This week I was sitting on my bed thinking and looked up at atmosphere. which is hanging on my wall.



When I made atmosphere. I planned to play more with the concept of less is more and with negative space in small quilts, all inspired by Yoshiko Jinzenji, who wrote Quilting Line + Color. So I looked again at the photos I had taken of my flowers.

And then I got to work. And finished yesterday.



There is an evening photo before I washed this quilt. I always like to remind everyone how much texture is added when you wash a mini quilt. Since I planned the texture, I washed and dried her in a nice warm dryer.



Here is her back, although the next picture is a better rendition of the wonderful olive colour of the Essex linen I used. The white piece is a serendipitous event. It somehow got added in the process and I did not notice it until it was fully quilted in. Somehow it was added totally smoothly without any applique or attention and stayed that way through all the turning while quilting.



The back is my favourite side.



You can check out the little quilts of the rest of  Four-in-Art group: Elizabeth, who blogs at Occasional Piece - Quilt! has shared her quilt and also Betty's who does not yet blog, and Rachel who blogs at Life of Riley will be sharing her quilt too.

And because this story had some thinking in it, I am linking to the Thursday Think Tank at Making Rebecca Lynn. 

Best,

Leanne