Sign, Signs Finished Design Wall Monday

Sign, Signs

Luke 21:25

48" by 57"

airbrushed, silk screened, machine quilted, hand embroidered

"There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea."

  You know I don't know why Paul thought I wasn't going to have this quilt done on time - I mean  - I had a whole 45 min to spare.  That's enough time for a shower and to wash my hair right?!  It was a bit frenzied but I did manage to get Sign, Signs done.  I am glad I'm getting this whole  facing, sleeve and label thing down though because I manage to do that process in only 4 hrs.

So here are some stats:

• 48" by 57"
• air brushed, silk screened
• machine quilted, hand embroidered
• polyester, cotton thread and perle cotton #5
• 28 hrs (not counting the stitching time)

Its been fun doing this piece since there was so many things I learned along the way.  You'll remember that it all started out as a way to keep my hands busy at work.  And then. .  ya know  . .  well -  it got way out of hand.  (The whole progression of this piece is here).   There were a lot of firsts.. . . air brushing, thermofaxing, and redwork. Oh and  it is the first quilt that I finished in my new studio and blocked on my new design wall (which is much easier than the floor btw!)

And yes I did fray the edges of my blocks - gasp!  I borrowed an idea I saw on Project Runway and used my seam ripper to do it (they used forks!).  There were a lot of borrowed ideas in this quilt.  Sandy gave me the confidence to air brush, Nadia  - the idea to fray the edges - Kit  - the idea to quilt the background and then place the blocks.  Thanks ladies - you're the best!

And yes I'll admit its an odd piece.  Just the idea of mixing modern surface design techniques such as air brushing and screenprinting with the age old embrodiery  of redwork (not done in red of course!) is unexpected.  But I think in this world of quilts that at times are all looking the same - unexpected is good.  Is it successful ????  Wellllllll that I'm not sure of.  I do know it does look like I envisioned.  I wanted to play with scale and shading.  I wanted to add texture to the bricks.  I wanted the viewer to get the impact of the scripture verse and then draw them in closer to see what's on the signs.  So that's all working .

But I'm afraid its a bit hokey.  I didn't want to have to add the framing on the signs but because they

faded into the background too much I had to - not to mention the addition of a dark fabric moved the viewers eye around the quilt.  There was  a lot of angst about the placement of the signs  - it kept coming back to a traditional 5 placement- two on top - one  in the middle - two on the bottom - Ugh!  So settled on this one and still not totally pleased.

Anyways - it was entered into the Erie Art Museum's Spring Show were literally hundreds and hundreds will enter and very few will be accepted.  But like Paul says - ya can't be accepted unless you enter.  Ohh and he entered his wedge table in too.  That doubles the chances that a Sayre will show their work this year!

Now onto finishing my studio and starting the lily quilts for this year Lily Art show.  See more great design boards at Judy's Patchworks.