Little Gardener is Complete!

I finished the Little Gardener Quilt started in March at the Wendy Bulter Berns Workshop.
Quilted the background and bound it this afternoon.


I spent a long time trying to figure out the best way to thread paint her face in order to make it look three-dimensional. This is what I came up with.
The thread-painting is done before the top is layered with batting and backing. So the face piece has stitching, but it puffs up from the quilt.


Same thing with her arm. Again, the thread-painting is done before the quilting, so it puffs up from the background.



Here is one of the heavily thread-painted flowers, along with the edge treatment : a little fancy yarn at the binding edge. I laid it on to test it, and it really did seem to be missing something when I pulled it away.

Feels good to have another project done!

The Little Gardner : Wendy Butler Berns Workshop

Detail of shirt

I took a vacation day to attend this 6-hour workshop on Photo Album Quilts with Wendy Butler Berns on March 18. I figured I needed a kick-start to get back into art quilts. Our local guild invited WBB in for this program. She's an extrememly positive and inspiring teacher--as well as a talented quilt artist.

This is my progress so far ... I have the little gardner stitched down--mostly. I need to finish the flowers today. Then starts the thread-painting, layering and quilting. Then finishing. She really explains value and color well. hHere's my understanding of her thoughts on color and value : (as for the hair) if you use different values of browns or blacks or reds or yellows and keep within that same color family, you can't go wrong. Those colors are all related--they'll add interest by being different values, but the viewer will still see them as related.


Detail of my little brunette with 5 different values of black for her hair.

WBB uses uses a glue-baste applique technique that was new to me. I'm used to raw-edge fusible applique. WBB's original pattern is a great vehicle for learning the new technique without worrying too much about an original pattern. Still--there's always room for creativity ....

How do you like my flowers? I changed the pattern a bit to accommodate my penchant for pinwheels. Here's a detail of one of the flowers :


You can see the edges are finished.


For comparison, here's the backside of the same flower. The edges are clipped and folded over and literally glued (as in a glue-stick found in office-supply stores) to the backside to provide the finished edge.

When I do get it finished, I'll be sure to post it.