Think Outside the Box

For a long time now, I've wanted to expand my quilt collection to include techniques that would read more as art than a traditional quilt. My desire was to blend my traditional hand quilting background with a contemporary, fiber art twist. I thought outside the box of traditional quilting, and this is where I landed! Who would have believed that the answer would come to me while I cleaned my studio.


These fiber art pieces had their beginnings as the scraps left behind after I squared off my fabric with the rotary cutter. I had just finished a quilt that had different fabrics with a white theme and I had a million little strips. With a little adjusting to my new found treasures, I was on the right track. I looked down on the stack of fuzzy white mini-strips and was a bit disheartened. The tone on tones that worked so well in the queen sized quilt, just looked like a sea of white. Flat and uninteresting. So I dug a little further into the basket and found some pretty sky blue pieces. I striped them up and added them to *the mix*. That was what it needed. A little color variance to give the collection some depth.



But it still lacked the 3-dimensional feel I was looking for. This was solved with a look into the basket that sits by my sewing station. I found little bundles of threads...all tangled together. I picked through them, sorting out the whites and metallic. I added the thread bundles to my fabric scraps and there it was! I was so excited.













The next task was going to be securing the thread and fabric bundles. All those little pieces!!



I needed a backing....
something to anchor the little pieces to. A piece of plain white muslin would do. I carefully laid all the little strips onto the muslin and pined like mad! Then to the sewing machine. I attached the darning foot and off I went.
For the first time in my quilting career I didn't have to worry about tying threads and burrying them at the back. I left the tails and it just added more personality to the....what do I call my new fabric creation?

I then cut the new fabric creation and assembled the little quilts the way I have for years. I added a needle turn applique tree trunk and soft sculpture branch, covered in snow, to the "Snowy Oak".
To "Believe in Magic" I incorporated a needle turn applique dragonfly and hand embroidered the verse.





To follow this new idea of an art piece, I made stretcher frames and mounted the quilts around them instead of using a binding.

I'm very happy with my decision to think outside the box. I have four more quilts on the design wall and have been having so much fun with this new technique.

Thank you very much for stopping by and I hope you visit again next week.