Growing JOY!

Each year, my creative practice goes through cycles of playing with fabric, paper, block-printing, carving, etc. While my fiber art may take a bit of a detour as I explore the world of mixed-media, these experiments tend to make their way back into my art quilting. Block printing is one of those detours that initially involved mostly paper as I honed my carving and printing skills, but has since completely transformed my fiber art!

After particularly intense challenges such as Project Quilting 1-week challenges and the 100-Day Project, I tend to need a bit of time to recover and reset. Such was the case this past June where I was trying to charge up my SewJo to create a 12" art quilt for SAQA's Benefit Auction. Finding energy to create something new was especially difficult given all that is going on in the world: attacks, wars, and threats to our democracy here in the United States.

Thankfully, inspiration struck 10 days before the deadline, through a free Watercolor and Collage online class offered by Lucie Duclos and guest watercolor artist Tiffany Sharpe which you can access by visiting Lucie's IG linktree page here. The class sparked my imagination as many of the shapes that Tiffany watercolor painted were similar to blocks in my hand-carved collection, whereas many of the doodles that Lucie used within her collage could easily be adapted for free-motion quilting and hand embroidery!

I went through my collection of nearly 400 hand-carved stamps and pulled out a fun selection of blocks that would make for a modern bouquet of flowers along with some fabrics to use for the background and vase. I woke up in the middle of the night with a flurry of ideas to explore in this new piece.

The next day involved a block-printing-palooza! Starting with a rich color palette of ~6" silk swatches from my local creative reuse center Fabmo, I went a little overboard with printing as I filled in all the nooks and crannies with a variety of shapes and sizes. While I certainly love the printing process, it is super helpful to have a variety of shapes and color options available for arranging the composition.

The prints were heat set as I applied Pellon 805 Wonder Under fusible web to the backside. I had plenty of fussy cutting to keep my hands busy while watching a bit of tv that evening.

And in case I didn't have enough components, I supplemented with a few previously printed shapes from PrintInktober2024. Given the volume of prints, I had a sneaky suspicion that this might evolve into a new series. Interestingly, when I was printing all the floral components back in October, my goal was to create floral arrangments: I just needed a few more months to percolate before executing that vision!

I had chosen a few low-volume cream-colored fabric swatches for the background. While I love the dotted print, it was not wide enough for a 12" square, so I found a few side border options including a very subtle stripe. I couldn't resist playing with the block printed elements but found the folded fabric distracting so I got to work on piecing the background.

Thankfully there was only one seam needed, but I was concerned by the amount of fraying of the fabrics, so I opted to echo with a second line of stitching to reinforce the seam. Once the background was pressed, I returned to playing with the block prints to create an interesting floral arrangement that included an interesting distribution of colors, shapes, and sizes.

After quite a bit of moving around the block-printed elements, I chose to sleep on it and revisit my composition in the morning. However, I couldn't resist auditioning a few stitching lines by placing a 12" square of acrylic plastic on top and doodling away with a fine-tip dry erase marker!

The next morning I did a bit of finetuning before I fused everything, but the bee and vase, into place. The swatch of black and white fabric was simply a placeholder for the vase but I still needed to figure out the shape, size, as well as fabrics. Initially I had pulled out the black and white fabric for the vase, but once I started cutting out paper templates, I was especially drawn to the outlined vase shape.

As many of you know, I do not trust most marking tools and tend to rely on my trusty blue painter's tape for marking my stitching lines and/or boundaries. I used 1/4" painter's tape to mark the 12" perimeter so I don't stitch any important details that will later get cropped in addition to the vase to ensure my flower stems make their way into the vase.

While I had visualized completing all the stitching in black and white threads, I pulled out a few spools of green thread just in case more color was neeeded!

I used small strips of blue painter's tape to plan and outline the curved stems that would connect each floral element into the vase and then proceeded to hand stitch next to the tape. However, the little bits of tape tended to peel away, especially as I scrunched and manipulated the quilt top with each stitch. While I continued to mark the stems with the tape, I began with large basting stitches on my machine that I then removed as I completed the hand embroidery. This worked much better, although next time I would use a more contrasting thread.

For 2-3 days, I toggled between hand embroidery and free-motion quilting to embellish each floral element with additional pattern and texture. I would work on one area and then take a break to tackle other projects on my to do list, and then stitch another area or two. And I even purchased an embroidery hoop making the hand embroidery so much easier on my hands.

It was hard to stop as I was pretty excited by the transformation, plus I loved the meditation that stitching provides!

The next day, I continued to add stitched details including more doodles and dots with both white and black pearl cotton.

Soon it was time to turn my attention to figuring out the vase to replace the paper mock up shown in the previous photos. Earlier that day I visited Fabmo and got a lovely black microsuede swatch that I cut out a vase. While it did not fray, the thickness of the fabric overpowered the other elements. Luckily I had some black dupioni silk in my stash that played well with the other fabrics.

The final detail was adding a block-printed honey bee. I had printed several bees onto a golden yellow color but didn't like the yellow wings. So I printed another bee onto white fabric which was layered with a sparkly sheer webbing for the wings, before fusing the yellow and black bee body on top. A dashed line was stitched to create the little bee's flight path.

I was really happy with the stitching but grew concerned by some distortion in and around the vase where the stitching was much denser than the rest of the quilt top.

I considered a few options including an all over meander or seed stitchings to stabilize the quilt--but worried it would overpower the wonderful background fabrics. While discussing my concerns with a fellow quilting friend, I got the idea to mount my quilt onto a stretched canvas. Thankfully I was able to find a local source that had 12" canvases in stock. Later that evening, I painted the perimeter and sides of the canvas black. While the paint was drying, I steamed the quilt top/batting flat before layering it onto Pellon 71F Peltex Ultra-Firm One-Sided Fusible. As I was not completely sure of the mounting process, I opted to back the entire quilt with a fun black & white floral backing fabric just in case Plan A did not work.

After lots of careful measuring, the quilt was trimmed to 12" square to fit the frame before topstitching along the perimeter to hold all the layers together. I totally forgot how much the top fabrics frayed when I went to stitch them together, so I used great care as I finished the quilt's edges by painting them with black Tulip Puffy Dimensional Fabric paint which definitely required my reading glasses!

I confess that I wasn't entirely sure of my next steps for mounting the quilt onto the painted canvas. So I stalled by touching up the paint on both the quilt and the canvas. While waiting for the paint to dry, I did a little online research to figure out what other artists were doing and what adhesives they were using and gathering a few back up options just in case Plan A didn't work. I prepared and attached a quilt label to the backside of the canvas and then thought lots of happy thoughts while I got to work on applying matte gel medium to the canvas using a palette knife and hotel key card to cover the entire surface. After double checking that the orientation of the quilt and label matched, I placed the quilt top on top taking care to align the edges evenly. Any excess matte gel medium was cleaned up since it would not dry clear. Then I carefully flipped it over and filled the insides with heavy books, the various mediums, and other nearby heavy items to maintain direct contact between the two surfaces. And then I just hoped that it would all work out while patiently waiting for the medium to dry!

A few hours later, I cautiously removed the heavy items and was so relieved to see that everything was held firmly in place. There was one small corner that lifted slightly away from the canvas, which was easily remedied by applying some Reptile glue and using my hand to apply pressure to that one small area while the glue set.

When viewing the quilt head on, you may only see a thin line of black from the painted quilt edges. You only see the black canvas when viewing from an angle but wow does it elevate the display factor! Before shipping the quilt off to SAQA, I attached a sawtooth hanger making it easy for the new owner to display their new artwork.

I absolutely love the finished piece!! It radiates all the JOY that I experienced while creating it!

Growing JOY! finishes 12" x 12"

Here is my artist statement:

For Toi Derricotte, “Joy is an act of resistance.” While it is easy to succumb to the adverse forces that threaten our democracy and our world, I choose to create with JOY as my own personal form of resistance. These block-printed and stitched blooms radiate the joyful meditation I experienced during their creation. May this floral bouquet add joy and hope to the world as noted by Lady Bird Johnson: "Where flowers bloom, so does hope."

Growing JOY! is out in the mail to be included in SAQA's 2025 Benefit Auction this September 12th through October 5th, where I hope it will help raise money to support SAQA's mission of promoting the art quilt. I'll be sure to share information in my newsletter and social media channels to let you know how you can bid to win this joy-filled quilt!

Here are a few detail shots

Here is a list of the materials I used to create this piece: hand-carved stamps, Ranger Archival Ink, assorted fabric swatches from Fabmo, Pellon 805 Wonder Under fusible web, metallic netting, assorted threads (Isacord 40wt, Wonderfil 8wt Perle Cottons, and Aurifil 40wt), Pellon 71F Peltex Ultra-Firm One-Sided Fusible, Tulip Puffy Dimensional Fabric Paint, Blick Acrylic Black matte paint, Liquitex Matte Gel Medium, a 12" stretched canvas, and perhaps a bit of my own blood, sweat and tears!