Displaced

Displaced
7" x 10"
I am trying to get back into the swing again, but finding it hard to concentrate.  So, I decided to try something small.  I wanted to make something for SAQA's Trunk Show, and I knew the deadline (Nov. 30) was coming up.  The trunk show is a collection of about 400 quilts that is divided into smaller groups.  The exhibit will premier April 27 - 30, 2017 in Lincoln, Nebraska concurrent with the annual SAQA conference. After that they will be kept at the SAQA shipping facility and can be borrowed, almost like a quilt library.  The intention of the collection is education, to show people what art quilts are all about.  It is  a remarkable idea and really fun to see the variety of ideas people come up with to put into a tiny 7" x 10" tiny sized quilt. These quilts travel for 3 years, and then are offered for sale, if the artist's chooses, and if not sold, they are eventually returned.  I am the Trunk Show coordinator this year and all the entries are shipped to me.  I get to see them ALL!  It has been a fun experience so far and I look forward to receiving more entries.  So far, participants have sent me about 60 quilts, and many more have been entered and are awaiting shipping.  I look forward to each day to see what the postal carrier will bring me.  It's like Christmas every day!

I was looking through my studio and trying to come up with an idea, and the one that settled was a smaller version of my quilt, Development.  The new one is called Displaced (aka., Goldie Foxes and the Three Bears! ha!), and it is about giving consideration to animals who have their habitats destroyed in the name of urban sprawl.  And though I recognize the value having homes for people, I am concerned that the loss of habitat is really bad for our environment.  There comes a point where the stewardship of the environment needs to be equally valued. It is a difficult balance. 

The little bee is from the selvage of Urban Artifacts, a new fabric line by Leslie Jenison.

How it was made:
The center part, with the houses, was made with little black boxes on top of newspaper, then layered with silk organza on top.  Place a screen and pull matte medium through the screen.  After the layers have dried they are gently scrubbed under water to removed the thickest part of the paper, leaving behind only the front image.  This was fused with Mistyfuse to a black cotton background.  Then I sewed borders around the center with some commercial cottons (the animals). Next I fused black triangles on top of the center squares to make the house shapes.  Lots of machine quilting to form the houses with X's and the gray contours of the hills, and finally some yellow hand stitching on the roofs.  I used a facing to gently wrap the quilt edges to the back and neatly finish them.  It was a bit of a process to make, but I had fun with every step, so the time flies by!