My Four Journal Quilts for May 2008

This is the first of my four weekly May quilts. It is called Trinity because the design I made uses many of the design elements in threes. It has private layers of meaning for me. I used fusing to attach the everything to the black background, and did some hand and some machine stitching.

This is the second of my four quilts for May. I made the digital image from a manipulated closeup photo of a pansy petal that I had taken. I drew the female Icarus-like figure after seeing a sculpture of Icarus on the grounds of the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I printed the digital image on fabric and attached it with decorative machine stitches to the background of metallic flecked rose colored fabric. I extended the 'sun' with a layer of gold painted plastic that began life as the peel-off protector on top of a yogurt container. I used free motion quilting in the background and bound the quilt in yellow. For me this quilt symbolizes the need to aim high, even though you may fly too close to the sun as Icarus did.

This third quilt in my May series of four expresses my joy at the beauty of May and the blooming iris in our yard. First I painted an iris on fabric and scanned it into the computer where I manipulated the image in various ways until I had a composite image that pleased me. I printed the image on fabric and used machine stitching to enhance it. I bound it with a happy print.

This is the fourth of my weekly 'journal quilts' for May. Like Huck Finn and Jim, I have lain outside on the ground at night with someone special and marvelled at the stars. For this quilt I used a handmade star stamp and metallic paint to decorate the night sky fabric, and then I used free motion machine stitching with variegated metallic thread to add more light.

April's Quilts

For this Nuthatch, I squished out some paint on glass and made a monoprint on tissue paper. Then I collaged the tissue onto the leafy fabric using diluted Elmer's glue. I printed the scanned nuthatch on fabric from the computer and appliqued him on, using machine satin stitch. I machine quilted the painted areas using decorative and straight stitch.
I love seeing a nuthatch scurry down a tree trunk head first.

The moon is fused fabric. The owl was printed on fabric and fused. The tree is free motion thread painted using silver metallic thread. Here in the western North Carolina mountains, we sometimes hear the big owls calling in the woods above our house on cold, early Spring nights.

I stencilled the hummingbird's silhouette on the glue side of fusible web and transferred it to the fabric with a hot iron. The flowers are done the same way and the leaves are fused fabric. I used free motion machine quilting to echo the bird's dancing, darting flight.
'Our' family of hummingbirds always arrives around April 20, and this year was no different. We always try to have their feeders filled and waiting for them. I'm pretty sure it is the same family group every year. I base my faith that they do return to their own specific yard on the following: My mother always hung her hummingbird feeder in a specific location. After she died, my brother lived in her house, but didn't put up any feeder. For several years, in early Spring, he saw hummingbirds arrive and repeatedly search the exact spot where my mother had hung her feeder----a spot that was now completely vacant of anything that could have attracted them.
I am amazed when I contemplate how precisely they must navigate. Welcome back, little guys!

I am always so happy to see Spring's first iris. I printed my digital photo on fabric. It needs more quilting, but I haven't decided what kind.