A Ribbon Always Makes Life Better

If you are one of my regular readers, you will remember my blog series on designing and sewing Garden of the Sun God. After a bit of time without receiving any significant awards for my work, I was beginning to doubt my abilities. Over the years, I have learned that there are many ups and downs to working for yourself and as an artist.  This is just one of those things. All of my thoughts, dreams and life are stitched into this quilt, it took longer than many I have designed.  Today I am thrilled and am basking in the glow!

Garden of the Sun God, original quilt by Ann Fahl

This weekend the judges at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in VA, awarded the piece "best machine workmanship" in the Innovative category. I am sending them a big thank you for the award.

Ann Fahl

Garden of the Sun God--The End

The last challenge is to find the right fabric for the binding. At first I thought perhaps it would work best to piece a variety of red fabrics together. But then I realized there was a lot of stuff going on in the border already, perhaps one or two fabrics cut on the bias would be a better solution.

It's wonderful when I go digging in my stash and can find a number of possible fabrics for the binding. I chose a red batik with lights, mediums and darks marbled through it.  Perfect. Always cut binding on the bias, the corners will turn flatter, and the long sides will lay flatter. For a thorough discussion on binding your quilt see my booklet on bias binding.

Announcing the completed quilt, Garden of the Sun God, by Ann Fahl, this quilt is now included in my Ancient Artisans gallery on my website.

The completed quilt, Garden of the Sun God, 52.5 x 63 by Ann Fahl © 2012

Ann

The Quilting: Garden of the Sun God

By now, you may all hope I am done talking about this quilt. To an artist, the piece they have just finished is always the best work they have ever done.  In time, this may change, as it's success or lack of changes my opinion of the work! But for now, it is one of my best.

Detail of quilting at the base of papyrus

Now the quilting has begun. This is the most exciting for me, because all the time and effort I have put into the fabric selection and embroidery pays off. First, I detail all the pieces using monofilament thread in the top and bobbin. Don't cringe.  I have been doing this since the 1980's and it has been successful for me. When monofilament thread is used in the correct way, it will be your best friend. Outlining and stitching in the ditch are two of the best uses no one will ever see it!

Quilting detail of the pond

Next I pull out all my decorative threads and quilt all the empty or negative spaces.  This is what I'm doing when I feel that I am dancing on the quilt. The texture in the quilting brings the subjects to life. This has become an intuitive process for me, because I have been a machine quilter since 1988. This is why I wrote a book on machine quilting--my variety of course.  It is spontaneous, unstructured and informal.  There is too much stippling and feather making on quilts today, and that doesn't work for me. So I wrote Dancing with Thread so others might feel free to experiment with my ideas and techniques.

Quilting detail on the fish and border

I love quilting little scales on fish.  Using a pastel variegated thread, I detail the face and fins first, then use a little clamshell stitch to create the scales.  Without doing lots of detailed fusing, I just use a hand painted fabric, quilt it up, and it becomes a rather life like fish.

Once the quilting on the interior of the quilt is complete, I work on the outer border. After some looking in my notebook of quilting ideas, and looking at earlier quilts I decided to use half a coneflower on the inside edge. They are evenly spaced out along the seam. I used a silver or a white pencil to mark the outlines of each one. The flower has a spiral in the center, and there is random stitching filling the rest of the border. A bright red variegated thread #832 Rainbow, worked beautifully on the various reds in the pieced border.

Allow me to express an opinion here. One of the sad things I am finding in the quilt world is that more and more people are handing over their quilt tops to someone else to quilt.  By doing this, the quilt is no longer the work of one artist! And.....they are missing the most satisfying part of the quilt making process.  LEARN TO QUILT SO YOU CAN COMPLETE YOUR OWN QUILTS.  It's more fun!

Ann Fahl

Embroidery on The Sun God's Garden

After spending so much time and thought on the composition of a quilt, it's fun to actually begin the machine work. For me, the embroidery is what adds rich texture, and holds all the pieces in position.  I do this in a hoop so I don't need any stabilizer underneath the pieces.  This creates a softer quilt top and allows the quilting (over wool batting) to add more dimension to the finished product. For more information on how Ann handles her embroidery refer to her book, Coloring with Thread.

Detail of Scraps of a Different Color showing rejected embroidery pattern

Being a coneflower fan, I wanted to begin with them.  I had already decided how I wanted to embroider my angular flowers. First I had experimented on another quilt where I discovered that I didn't like my first idea. This is why it is so important to test out ideas first, so problems can be avoided on major pieces of work. So I had to rethink my ideas and this is what I came up with.

Embroidery and quilting detail of coneflowers with honey bee

Each petal was detailed in the opposite direction with a variegated pink thread. This was a simple plan which I could easily accomplish, yet different than anything I had done before.

The papyrus was another challenge.  How will I embroider them?  I chose to use metallic blue and green thread to detail the heads, and gold thread for the sepals. This was lots of fun and a challenge to work with metallics.  I had finished writing my Mastering Metallics booklet by this time, so I tested out some of my suggestions! The detail on the curved edge is really pleasing and adds richness of texture.  I also love the little circles that hold the seeds in the papyrus head.

Harry becomes the focal point using Superior Thread's Midnight Rainbow #844

 And then there is Harry. I knew all the embroidery on the bird was going to make him come to life. I didn't worry too much about individual feathers, I just wanted texture.  Midnight Rainbow add the color I wanted over the double dyed blue/purple fabric. Notice that the grass behind the bird adds more depth to the quilt.

Now that the embroidery is complete, all that remains is the quilting.

Time to put the Sun in the Garden

The sun rests above the garden.

The black "bowl" above the heron's panel is actually a cow horn headdress.  It holds a flaming sun that I created from a commercial fiery red fabric. One of the earliest symbols in ancient drawings and art is the sun disk.  In early Egypt is was shown as a headdress worn by the goddess Hathor, or seen as simply a round disk in the sky.  Now the flaming red sun fabric can warm my quilted garden.

It is now time to permanently fuse all the pieces in position.  I do this on my design wall, after painstakingly removing the paper backing from the Wonder-Under.

I thought I was done. After reviewing a photo of the "finished" piece, I realized that the panel behind Harry needed a little something.

Addition of grass in center panel

I cut out some little grass like shapes and they seemed to fill the soil area behind Harry. Yes, this is a small thing, but the empty field now has what it needs.

Now it is time to begin the embroidery.

Garden of the Sun God

It is time to introduce to you my latest quilt, completed this past spring.  You can visit it at Houston if you go to the big show in October.

At the time of its creation, my teaching schedule had slowed down considerably, so I had more relaxed embroidery and quilting time with this large quilt. It was a joy to make.  I did envision how this quilt to should go together, the background is 4 basic pieces, a little different from my usual style, but similar in feel to Egyptian Garden II.

The working title for this new quilt was Egyptian Water Garden III. The plan was to paint a large panel of fabric which would be divided into 3 thin strips for the background. I always cut the white base fabric a little larger than needed, to give myself some options in how to trim it up for the quilt. So I used about 1.5 yards of "prepared for dying" white cotton.  I poured and dribbled lots of sky blue stuff on the top and browns, greens and yellows for the lower edge.  I twist up the fabric into a long log so the Setacolor paints intermix in interesting patterns.

This is the hand painted panel, pressed, sliced into 3 sections, auditioning a sashing strip.

I envisioned a water garden, with papyrus, pink coneflowers, and a blue heron fishing in a lily pond. So above you see the very beginning! Remember, this will have an ancient Egyptian feel to it, but I created most of symbols to make it mine!

The sashing strips were cut from a rich hand dyed fabric by Dagmar Plenk of Milwaukee. It was a luscious fabric blending red, gold and rust dyes. It made me think of very hot desert when I saw it for the first time. Above the shorter center panel I will place the symbol of the Egyptian sun god.

The strips are pieced with the red sashing. The lower dark blue strip is being auditioned for the water.

The heron is supposed to be fishing in the pond, and I have decided that the special water fabric I have purchased is too heavy and dark.

Auditioning another lighter turquoise for the strip to become the pond.

This lighter fabric blends and subtly contrasts with the upper section, so I'm much happier with this selection.  Good thing I had it left over from my Orange Coneflower Quilt.

Auditioning red fabrics for outer border.

Now the inner section is complete. All the while I have been working on the background, I have been unsure about what to use for the outer border.  It must harmonize with the inside, yet be heavy enough to hold all the sections together. I'm not there yet.

More border auditions.

It seems that I'm getting closer to a border.  I like the fabric on the lower left that changes from bright red to dark red. This creates an interesting border with some movement; this works well with the water idea.

Tune in next time to view the exciting conclusion.......What will be chosen for the border!

Have a good weekend.

Ann Fahl