Tui at Dawn

As promised, here is my prize-winning (you have no idea how cool it is to write that!) quilt, Tui at Dawn.  As you can see, it isn't a huge work, 79 cm by 49 cm.

My quilter's statement: "The morning mists change colours, perspectives, outlines.  Things become ghostly and otherworldly.  The wingbeats of Tui echo and their ethereal song is haunting, as if from another time altogether."

I began with a layer of fabric strips fused onto a background fabric.  Then I painted some elements onto this background mainly using freezer-paper stencils.  There is also one raw-edge appliqued Tui.  I used a silk organza top layer and stencilled other elements onto this and painted it also.  The sun is a separate piece of hand-painted silk organza slipped in between the background and top layer and there is some netting slipped in there too.  It was then machine quilted on my domestic machine.

Here it is on my design wall when I was playing with placement of birds and sun.  You can see that I actually reversed the top layer to fly some of the birds the other way.

And a couple of detail shots for you.

I'm home safe and sound now from the Taupo Symposium Fibre Art Festival, after been woken at 2.45am on my last morning by a bit of an earthquake!  Nothing like Wellington has been experiencing I'm sure, but it was enough to get the heart beating a little faster.

I've hugged the kids, unpacked my fabric splurges and left the unpacking of my suitcase for another day.  And now I'm going to have a cup of tea with a couple of quilty friends who didn't get to the Symposium.

I'll do another post tomorrow, hopefully with my other quilt that was accepted and the little red 12 x 12 quilts.  See you then!