Whoa

This year has gotten off to a very creative start. This quilt, "Whoa," won 1st place at the Ft. Myers AQU Journey Show (art quilts only) in Jan. in the Florida Original category.

My inspiration was a photo I took of my neighbor's brilliant potted bromeliad.

I used Maya Schonenberger's glued background technique. I painted it to make lighter and darker areas. I used silk and polyester fabrics to create the leaves. They were fused to buckrum. I painted them and stitched them to give them a lot of detail. The leaves were then glued to felt and glued to the background. I stitched each leaf to the background. This gave the bromeliad a lot of dimension. I did some quilting on the background. I used black flannel as batting only to provide a third layer to meet some show requirements. The back is black Egyptian cotton, which is folded back and stitched to look like facing. The frayed edges of the background and batting give the quilt more interest. The edges are not straight.

I entered "Whoa" in the Broward Quilt Expo at the War Memorial Auditorium in downtown Ft. Lauderdale's Holiday Park Mar. 18-20.