Here's what I am calling the Wendy Quilt. I made it for a friend of mine, who, oddly enough, is named Wendy. The size of the quilt is about 2 feet by 4 feet and was created using a sunprinting method. I collected the leaves on a walk around the block of my condo. Three colors of paint contributed to the purply goodness of the quilt: violet, indigo, and magenta. I hand-embroidered the stems radiating out from the large branch of small leaves to the bottom left of the quilt. I used a combination of metallic threads in silver, slate, and smoky purple for the embroidery thread. I couched silver eyelash yarn on as the main branch for the separate stems, as well as the stems of the three oak leaves at the top of the quilt.
Once I was satisfied with the embellishments, I created the quilt sandwich and went to town quilting outlines around the leaves. Pretty soon I discovered the effect of adding in lines to represent the veins of leaves. Once I had outlined the areas I wanted, I went back through and quilted some free-formed leaves and flowers to fill in the blank spots.
At the last minute, I decided the bottom of the quilt needed something, so I created a leaf from Angelina fibers and stiched it directly onto the quilt. It doesn't show up in the pictures very well, but the leaf has folds and crevices in it like a real leaf, and adds a three-dimensional look to the piece.
I opted out of a border for the piece, and decided to let it speak on its own. All that was left was creating the rod pocket and binding the quilt. Lesson learned: having something crafty to do with your hands, like hand-stitch the binding onto a quilt, is a good way to pass the time on an airplane. But, when you don't finish it on the plane, you end up working on it in your hotel room at night.
The end result was a Purple Quilt of Goodness that I almost didn't give away. Which begs the question: Should I be keeping more quilts for myself, or just making quilts that aren't so fun?
