Wisteria Window

It took a while to figure out how to do this! This is the edited version.

Top picture is original- next one is the new version- Thanks for the comment, Linda! I had thought about adding some brown yarn in the beginning, but your comment kicked me enough to try- I like it better! I also added more "moss."
Here it is- my first post to the blog. Wisteria Window- it is 11"x14". I have had stone walls and windows floating around in my head for a while now. I have spent hours studying pictures of different stone walls, buildings, and windows of all kind (?I don't plan out or study for quilts, do I?). Moss added itself to the mix just about the time this challenge came out. Now I was checking out moss formations on stone walls. I decided to let things come out in a small version, to see what happens.

I usually only use cotton fabrics, mostly my own painted or sunprinted ones. This is the first piece I have done in a long while with none of my painted fabric in it. I picked up a box of silk kimono scraps with 3 bottles of Colorhue dyes at Houston, last fall. I also have 4 yards of silk I purchased 4 years previous- untouched. Time to try silk! I decided some of the scraps could resemble stones, and dyed some of the scraps a kind of muddy, mossy green color. I also ended up with a tiny piece of silk batting from a little class I took to learn about the dyes, that colored nicely. I backed the silk pieces with Wonder Under, or Liquid Thread, fusible, and cut up the fabrics and fused them onto a batting base. The biggest problem I had, was telling which side of the silk had the WU on it- I stuck quite a few pieces to the parchment I used while ironing, just peeled them off, turned them over, and put them back on. The liquid fusible gets chalky, so it showed up well.

The window is a piece of shiny, opalescent, synthetic fused to the batting. I used wax pastels to add color to the batting before fusing the window over it. It looked too blue, so I scribbled over the window with black pastel to tone it down. After I built the stone wall around the window (I did use some cottons too), I framed the window with a brown cotton print. The batting worked great for texture- I pulled apart the fibers, and also shredded some yarns, for moss. I trapped these under a pale green tulle that I backed with Wonder Under. The vine is a neat, funky green yarn I had, and used the liquid fusible to hold it in place till quilting, as well as trapping some of it with some of the tulle.

To add more color, I used a small bit of a purple-blue batik for the wisteria flowers, and cut most of those tiny leaves from a 2" square piece of silk I dyed (am I nuts?). I did have to add a few cotton leaves. Free motion quilting adds tendrils, small stems, and some more texture to the stone wall. I did notice the needle didn't go through the silk like my usual cottons.


Here is a detail shot- showing a couple pieces of neat pieces of silk that had rectangular designs stitched onto them.
Maybe those yards of silk will find themselves painted or dyed, and in some new work. This is probably a beginning for a new series. There are still stone walls, windows, and moss floating around in my brain. I even ended up piecing a stained glass window for a WIP, before I could get this quilted. (Too much trouble to change thread- the machine had black in it), so now I have a window to build another wall around.
I'll be posting progress on that in my blog. andrusgardensquilts.vox.comAny and all comments welcome.