An Art Quilt

Cheryl quilted this for a customer last spring. This was a challenge to quilt in many ways - the background was pieced on a stiff stabilizer, the photos were printed on fabric and enhanced with paint, but the closeups of faces were too large to leave unquilted - and just quilting the eyes and cheekbones wouldn't be enough either. Quilting on faces is very challenging and probably not often successful. (Hollis Chatelain's work being a notable exception.) The client had some specific requests that don't show in this photo - for example, there is very dense quilting to make up the warp threads of the weaving and to portray the straw material of the big black hat. Cheryl thought she would have pictures of it completed - the client added lots of beads after the quilting was completed, to enhance the clothing and as jewelry for the women. But lacking that photo, here's the quilt as it looked after quilting -


The borders were a relief - a place to show off some quilting texture, drawn from the inner border fabric print.