adventures of a quilting diva

Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts are mini art quilts 9″ x 12″ or less (fits inside a USPS Priority Mailer) created and sold to help make finding a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease a priority. This year 39 of my Quilt Art internet friends and I participated in a Stay-At-Home Challenge for quilters who weren’t going to Houston but didn’t want to simply sit at home and feel sorry for ourselves, so we took this opportunity to create Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts.

Priority: Alzheimer’s Quilts are part of The Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative, founded by quilter Ami Simms to make a difference one quilt at a time. Here is my first Priority Quilt, On a good day. Artist Statement: I imagine snippets of memories floating by on a breeze. On a good day you can almost reach out and touch them.
This quilt is made from cotton and lamé fabric, with fusible machine appliqué, machine quilting and hot-fix Swarovski crystals. Fusing tissue lamé for machine appliqué is not as hard as one might expect. Just follow these simple steps:

1). Iron WonderUnder to reverse side of tissue lamé (the right side is whichever side you like best, if you can tell a difference between the two) using a medium-hot iron and a dry press cloth (I like to use a piece of cotton jersey cut out from an old T-shirt or a scrap of muslin as a press cloth for this).

2). Cut out your appliqué shapes, remove the paper backing, and iron shapes to the background fabric with your medium-hot iron and dry press cloth. Don’t hold the iron in place for longer than the recommended fusing time, instead check to see how well it is fused and then give it another 10 seconds or so if necessary, repeat ironing and checking until all the edges are securely fused. It is better to check and repeat a few times than to iron too long in one go and melt the lamé.

3). Machine appliqué around the edges with a zig zag stitch. Use a sharp new needle and sew carefully because it’s better not to rip stitches out of the fused tissue lamé if at all possible.

This is a terrific technique for art quilts and wall hangings that will not see a lot of rough handling or excessive washing. I have never tested it on a bed quilt or wearable art garment.

Here are the Swarovski crystals I used on my Priority Quilt. These are different than the usual bling bling hot fix crystals that we all know and love. It is an opaque turquoise and is perfect for those times when your quilt calls for a little embellishment, but not the sparkle. You can find them at Kandi Corp.
Stay tuned for part 2 for directions on how to make an Alzheimer’s Fidget Quilt.

Here is the photo I worked from in Zéphirine Drouhin. Once upon a time it looked more like the photograph (several years old, taken from my scrapbook). I didn’t want to spill ink on it so I put the page away halfway through. That is when the fairy took on a look of her own, although when my DD tilts her head she looks alot like the fairy, and as she looks a bit younger than the fairy, they should look even more alike in a few years. I really liked the fairy as she was so I kept her even though it was not an exact likeness. The inks behave somewhat like watercolors in that you cannot overwork them or it will become muddy. I had to abandon my first attempt, taken from a different photo, because it was becoming mud pie.

You can also see some of the embellishments (beads, glitter, embroidery threads, and crystals). Angelina fibers are in the wings and metallic threads in her hair.

Finally we have the close-up of one of the rosebuds, the border quilting, the binding treatment, and the view from the back. Yes, those are very thick threads and very large quilting stitches.

You can see larger detail images, the painting which inspired this quilt, and other interpretations of that painting in the Spring 2006 ARTImage Challenge Webshots Album.

You can read about my original inspiration for this quilt on the Delphi Quilt Studio Forum, Spring ARTImage Picture and Discussion, message #57.