Embellished With Love

The San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles put out a call for entries for their annual FiberShots Community Challenge which helps raise funds for the museum.  Entries are all 16" x 16" and auctioned off with prices starting at $300 with all proceeds funding the museum's programs.  This year's theme was "Embellish Your World" for the opportunity to add any number of quilt embellishments

Heart Mock Up

I love quilting and wanted to incorporate hearts into my quilt entry.  I went through my studio and did some shopping to pull out a variety of embellishment techniques...which I admit was a bit overwhelming.  Thanks to a 1 week extension and a friendly nudge from a fellow guild member, I managed to complete my entry in time.  Last Sunday I had a few sketches and started to pull and cut fabric, but when I laid out the blocks, they were simply too busy, too much and I decided to scrap.  I chose 2 black and white prints to accent solid black and white fabrics to create a checkered background.  Then I planned to use an ombre fabric to create a 3-D heart ornament that would hang from my quilt.  But first I needed to make a mock up to refine my construction techniques to fit my vision.

Close Up of Hearts with their textured backdrop

Reverse Side of 3-D hearts-hot pink felt

While I love my little polka dot heart, it was scrapped for smaller, loftier hearts that were all designed to hang slightly off balance.





Great care was then taken to stitch the heart ornaments into the quilt background while taking even greater care not to stitch over them when adding quilted texture into the solid centers with free motion escargot in the black squares and walking foot square spirals in the white squares.

"Love & Embellish Your World"

Reverse Side

And to complement the ombre yarn used for the heart ornaments, I found this great ribbon fabric for my quilt back.  While I entitled this quilt "Love & Embellish Your World", only after the label was attached and bound did I dub it "Embellish Your World with Love."

I will admit that I really liked this quilt and was very tempted to keep it for myself.  But I am hoping it will help raise some funds to support the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles and all that they do to promote fiber art!   You can bid on this piece and the others that will be on display in March through April.