Gallery Sunflower Appliqué Bargello Art Quilt

Hey Everyone, welcome back to Coffee Talk Saturday on Friday. Today has been quite a day so I will do my Colourful Friday instalment on Saturday instead.

As you may know, especially those of you who receive my monthly newsletter, I am in an upcoming gallery show and today was the deadline for my pieces to be at the gallery. The gallery requested 4 – 7 pieces and knowing how long art quilts actually take to make I decided four was a good number.

Getting ready for a show is quite the undertaking and definitely not for the faint of heart. I have been working on the pieces nonstop for a few weeks now. [Editor’s Note: only a few weeks, eh dear? And it’s me that can’t keep track of time these days?] Each one needed to be designed from an original idea which means that I had to be creative four times over. The inspiration for 3 of them came from photos while one was just born from some lines on the paper.

After coming up with the idea, a design has to be worked out on paper then transferred to fabric. Picking the fabrics is what can take the longest for me. I take out of my stash what I think will work and then take more out of my stash as I put some back and before I know it half my stash in certain colours is all over my table. [Editor’s Note: she really means all over the house!] Finally though the fabric decisions are made.

Creating the pieces in fabric is very exciting as I never really know if the piece is going to come out the way I have pictured it in my head. Most of the time it resembles what I have pictured, but sometimes it is nothing like what I thought it would be.

Finally, the quilting is added and the piece is almost ready for the show. Just a couple more details to attend to like a facing or binding, some hanging sleeves and the most important part the label.

It has been a long few weeks with some short nights but it has been worth it. I am very pleased with the pieces I have created and two of them are UFO’s from my long list of UFO’s. Yippee I can scratch two of them off the list – I think I might be under 40 now.

For anyone interested the show opening is at the Ridge West Gallery in Oro-Medonte township on Friday April 5, 2013 from 6 – 9 pm. The address is 953 Ridge Road. Check out the Ridge West Gallery website for directions.

Over the next week or so I will talk about each quilt in more detail – the idea, the fabric selection, the creating process and finally the quilting.

Hope to see you there.

Happy Quilting!

Jen Transparent Signature

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