Project Quilting 14.1: My First Time Making 3-D Fiber Art for The First One

It's Project Quilting Season 14!! This will be my 8th year of participating in these fun quilting challenges where participants have 1 week to start and finish a quilt in response to the challenge theme. I always love these challenges as they are a safe space to try something new and different inspired by the weekly prompt. Not only have I made 42 entries for Project Quilting, but many of these finishes have led to the development of new workshops and my Challenge Yourself! Lecture/Trunk Show where I promote the benefits of participating in quilt challenges. 

This week's challenge, set by PQ Challenge Mistress, Trish Franklin is The First One inviting participants to start and finish a quilted entry that uses the theme of "one."

Prior to the theme announcement, Trish posed a question on the Challenge Quilts Facebook Group asking for input on whether participants were considering setting a specific intention for creating a series and/or theme for this season. In past seasons I've added my own challenges including using unconventional materials in Season 9, stitching wholecloth quilts  for Season 11, and most recently incorporating mark making on fabric during Season 12 and 13. For this year, I'm considering channeling Gollum from Lord of the Rings by picking out groups of "My Precious" fabrics/bundles that I've been saving for years and to actually use a different set to make my challenge entries. 

With that consideration, allow me to introduce you to My Precious fabric bundle #1: Indigo Dyed Fabrics from my first and only time Indigo Dyeing back in 2017. While I very much enjoyed the process, it required extensive leaning over a vat of indigo dye to slowly introduce the fabrics for repeat soaks without introducing too much oxygen that would compromise the dye power. These beautiful and precious fabrics have been safely tucked away in my studio until this week...

I immediately knew I wanted to add some bright warm fabrics, but otherwise didn't have any design plans for this palette...until 4:45 AM Saturday morning!

I woke up early with the idea to create my first 3-D fiber art piece in the form of a wind chime. Adding dimension to my art quilting has intrigued me for a few years now and was one of my personal goals for last year. Despite gathering supplies and making notes, I kept chickening out on making any 3-D art in 2022. This week's challenge presented the perfect opportunity to create my my first 3-D art quilt. I was giddy with excitement over the possibilities and raced into the studio at 5 AM to do a quick sketch before gathering supplies.

In order to give my chimes some structure, I used Pellon Wonder Under to layer my quilt sandwiches with a top (Indigo print or silver metallic stretch fabric), backing (warm ombre/print), quilter's dream low loft batting and one of two ultra firm stabilizers on hand: Pellon Peltex 70 and Timtex.

Surprisingly, I didn't hesitate much when cutting into the indigo fabrics. I simply selected the areas I wanted to showcase and set the rest aside just in case.

Here are some of the smaller "door bead" spirals that I stitched into one of the metallic/ombre quilt sandwiches. Blue painter's tape created lane lines and a 2" circle of contact paper was used as a template for stitching consistent sized circles before filling in with a spiral. At first I experienced quite a few thread breaks and skipped stitches. After my first round of troubleshooting--putting in a new needle, adjusting the tension, cleaning out a few dust bunnies, and doing a bit of oiling, the thread was still shredding pretty regularly. A bit of internet research about stitching with Peltex/Timtext suggested using a larger needle and so I went up one size to size 100/16 and that worked considerably better!

One of the prepared quilt sandwiches never got quilted, one was quilted but ditched as I really didn't like the quilting, and a few other bits below were set aside as they either seemed too bulky or because  I didn't need all the quilted parts.

The remaining quilted panels were trimmed and the edges were finished with Tulip Slick Dimensional Paints (aka Puffy Paint). An assortment of jars, acrylic paints, glue sticks, tins, and thread spools were used to prop up the components for drying. Tulip's website indicates 4 hours for drying, so this was my opportunity to eat dinner, relax while watching a movie, start my blog post, and mull over how best to assemble the wind chimes.

Thankfully the paint was dry when the movie finished, so I could play with the layout and figure out the assembly. My plan was to keep it simple by having one center chime (left colum in the photos below) surrounded by 3 similar chimes shown on the right below. I wanted to stagger the various elements and could have kept sorting them back and forth before I finally called it with layout shown in the right photo below.

There was definitely a learning curve to hand stitching the elements together to form a chime column. I think my first two knots practically fell out as I was stitching the next few knots, ultimately requiring replacement. The center column took me 39 minutes to sew from bottom to top! Thankfully my sewing/knotting technique improved considerably in appearance, speed, and strength for assembling the remaining chime columns. My hands were pretty occupied so I wasn't able to capture photos of the sewing/assembly, but I can share the supplies I used:

• Metal Wreath Ring purchased from the Dollar Store months ago. As this was my first quilted wind chime, I opted to use the smaller one.
• 5wt Perle Cotton thread handdyed by Laura Wasilowski. The other threads (Aurifil, Isacord, Superior King Tut, and Superior Metallic) were used to free-motion quilt the chime elements.
• Irridescent beads recently purchased from FabMo for a whopping $0.25.They ranged in color from a beautiful green, teal, and blue--very similar to how the indigo-dyed fabrics transformed from lime green when they first came out of the dye vat and oxidizing to teal, and finally various values of indigo blue depending on how many times it is dipped into the indigo bath. The beads were used in between the fabric chime elements and add a bit of weight.

We've been experiencing significant rain and wind here in the San Jose, CA area. Not only was I racing against the PQ deadline, but I worried that we might lose power at any moment given all the wind. Thankfully we never lost power, although I was fully prepared to stitch by lantern if necessary! The storm cleared out in time for a morning photo and video shoot!

And here is my finished "Chime Chiminey" wind chime...

"Chime Chiminey," Finishes 40" tall with a 10" diameter

It is so much fun to see it in movement--which you can watch with this link to my Instagram post.

I'm excited to explore more 3-D fiber art techniques in the upcoming year. As this was a prototype, I learned a lot during its creation and have a few ideas on how to improve upon the construction and design. Thankfully I have a few more wreath rings available for future wind chime making! And I look forward to gathering the courage to cut into and use more of my "Precious" fabrics for future Project Quilting Challenges.

Be sure to check out all the linked up projects made this week celebrating The First One! And I hope you'll join one or more of the remaining challenges with the next one kicking off on Sunday, January 15th!