Artsy Fartsy with Island Batik – Beginnings

So, I’m not totally into the name of this month’s Island Batik challenge, but the challenge itself has swallowed me whole. Our assignment this month is to make an art quilt, and I need to incorporate 3 different weights of Aurifil thread, which have been provided to me as part of the Island Batik Ambassador program.

I’ve had several ideas that have come and gone since the assignments came out in January. I had a night time flight of geese into a full moon, which made it to a sketch phase and no further. Then there was a portrait of Oscar, which pretty much died due to lack of ambition. It wasn’t until I met with my art quilt group, Quilt Lab at Gotham Quilts, that my real inspiration took root. Next month I am giving a talk on fabric manipulation and 3-dimensional quilting techniques.

I was going to cover prairie points, pleating, faux chenille, and a few others, as the mood struck. How would I work it all into one project? I started on my research, found Teresa Down Under’s Textured Quilt Sampler, and now I’ve lost my damn mind.

My quilt is based on a pattern by Barbara Persing called Babyhood. The pattern includes four lovely, simple pieces meant to give you a sophisticated baby quilt in a short period of time. I’ve taken the fish pattern, and gone way, way farther than intended.

Rather than the solid background called for, I’ve done some improv piecing to make a watery background with greater depth. I gathered up all of the various blue scraps from my collection and decided to use a range of techniques.

The first row was simply sewing together a bunch of rough cut triangles, leftovers from my Make it Modern Challenge. Since the row was jagged, I did an improv curves technique to join it together with solid pieces of batik.

I’m alternating un-pieced rows and pieced rows, to reduce the potential chaos of the background.

The next row was freezer paper foundation piecing. I sketched out some curves, then filled it in with flying geese. It was fun, although a little bit of a pain to deal with such a large piece. It worked out exactly as intended, although now that it is up on the wall and combined into the top, I wish I had matched the backgrounds so that just the row of geese was visible. (Good thing I have another fish quit in the works!)

At this point I had a ton of tiny scraps, so I pieced them together randomly until they were larger than 6 1/2″ squares. Then I used my AccuQuilt Go! to trim them up and bring order to the chaos.

The last row was the closest to the top. I gave myself some wavy action by doing another round of improv curves. I did one row, then laid it onto the next piece, and cut again, making sure to intersect my curves.

Tah dah! Completed background. Please disregard the fishy sneak peek there.

You may be asking, Jen, you said this was about texture? Here is where it gets really fun. I am using different texturizing techniques for each of the four fish. Brilliant, right?

Each fish has 4-7 parts. I plan to do one technique to the body, one to the tail, and then threadwork on the fins. That gives me space for 8 or so different techniques! I’m really excited. I’ve done one fish body so far, but I don’t want to share all of that just yet. Follow me on Instagram if you want to see daily progress. Otherwise, I’ll be back next week some time with the finished quilt.

For the Aurifil portion of the quilt, I have done all of my piecing with my trusty cone of 50 weight dove grey. It is my go-to for a blendy piecing thread. I have a lot more planned, so stay tuned!