Mustard Seed (part 4)

In part 2 I mentioned that I highlighted the text in the parable of the mustard seed. Here's a close-up that shows the brown fabric marker I added to create a shadow and contrast to make it easier to read.  

And now for the quilting.  First was a zigzag around the stones to serve as the foundation and provide emphasis.

Then I stitched the village houses to look like stones, a free motion feather stitch on the mustard field, and wavy lines in the sky.

 The remainder of the surface was covered with small circles - and lots of thread!

So that's it, the story of the mustard seed quilt and how it all came together.  Hope you enjoyed my story!

Mustard Seed (part 3)

My next step was printing the mustard seed plants. I wasn't sure of the base color I wanted to use so I did some test prints (I made a practice piece to try my ideas as I went through the process).  The gold is printed over a brown base and slightly offset to create a shadow effect.

  The next two pictures show the brown base print and the gold over print.

Additional prints are added.

The last step with the mustard plant was adding an additional print layer on the flower portion of the plant.

 Next step - the quilting.

Mustard Seed (part 2)

After creating all the pieces, it was time to put them together.  The left panel was seamed to the linen foundation, and then the wall pieces were fused to the linen, slightly overlapping the seam.  While some of the following pictures may look the same at first glance, you may want to click on them for a larger view of the subtle changes.

Then I filled in the scene through the window.  I guess I should have taken more pictures of that part of the process.  If you can see the pile in the bottom left corner, and the small dark pieces scattered near the bottom of the quilt top, those are pieces I was "auditioning" for the village.  I played with some different fabrics to come up with the final selections that seemed to work best.  The construction of the village is a variation of a technique developed and taught by Karen Eckmeier in her Happy Villages quilts.  Beyond the village is the field of mustard plants.  This was done with a photo transfer onto "Extravorganza", which is a sheet of organza fabric adhered to paper so it can be fed though an ink jet printer.  The sky is a piece of hand dyed fabric.  All the elements seen through the window are fused in place prior to stitching.

In this next step, I added a layer of paint.  I used bubble wrap as a "stamp" by brushing the paint on the bubbles and then stamping it onto the fabric. I did this over the whole piece to better unify and blend the color contrasts.  I think it was a silver or grey paint.

Next came a layer of screen printing on the left panel in gold printing ink.  There are 3 different varieties of mustard: Brassica nigra (black mustard), B. juncea (brown mustard) and Sinapis alba (white mustard).  So I made a screen of these botanical plant names and printed it down about 3/4 of the length of the piece; I was saving the bottom 1/4 for something else.

The bottom section is also screen printed, with the text of the parable of the mustard seed, also in the gold paint.  In another post I'll show what I did later to enhance this section of text.  You can also better see the circles from the bubble wrap printing and the texture it adds to the piece.