My little quilt 'The Backseat Band' has arrived home.
It has been touring New Zealand as part of Bernina's 'Music Challenge'.
I visited the exhibition when it was on at Minerva Gallery here in Wellington. Even though I'd seen pictures on-line, seeing the quilts for real was quite different and I noticed more details. It was interesting seeing the range of styles, techniques and abilities yet none looked out of place.
The first thing I did when I got the quilt home was to check for residual pink marks and was happily surprised that there weren't any!!
Why? when I was making the quilt I had a great idea (well at the time it was but soon after wasn't) to use a pink Frixion highlighter pen. I wanted a nice thick line to stitch either side of before I coloured the line in with Tsukineko ink. The highlighter was the right width and would easily iron out, as the other Frixion pens do (mostly).
When I went to iron out the pink it didn't totally remove. I washed the piece, that didn't remove the pink but did lighten the ink. From memory the only thing that did remove the pink was nail polish remover - not sure what the long term effect of that might be!!
This year Bernina NZ have been running a Music Challenge. The size of each quilt had to fit within A2 (594 x 420mm).
Completed entries were taken to the local Bernina dealer. They then selected a winning quilt which will be part of an exhibition that will tour the country during 2014.
Each dealer also ran a 'viewers choice' for the most humorous quilt, which then competes with all the other humorous quilts for the overall winner.
My entry 'The Backseat Band' won the viewers choice for Nancy's Embroidery Shop (my local Bernina dealer).
Voting is now open on Facebook (click here ) until Tuesday 10th December 2013 (NZ time). If my quilt makes you smile (or not) and you felt like voting then please do so.
I was inspired by the stick figure stickers on the back windows of cars, the ones with Mum, Dad, the kids, the cat, the dog, etc. - which I refuse to have on my car! The quilt pretty much represents our musical (!) family, including the fellow on the right who wants the noise music to stop.
The figures were stitched first with double lines and then coloured in with Tsukineko inks. Before applying the ink I painted on Aloe Vera gel (a Judy Coates Perez technique). This seems to make it easier to apply the inks onto the fabric while also stopping the ink bleeding out onto the fabric. The quilting also fits the musical theme with the repeating five lines (staff) and the music notes flowing through.
