Wild Scraps

Gabriele Bach - Wild Scraps 

Wild Scraps - detail

When I read the theme for this challenge, I thought, I just have made a real wild quilt. "Backside Mystery", my quilt for the last challenge, is wild.

Ok, this is a new challenge, there are waiting more "wild" ideas. See also my post "TOO MUCH" .

I have a box full of little fabric scraps, which I can't throw away. I often try to use them but it is very difficult. They are a wild mixture of colour, pattern and style. Now their chance had come. I looked for dark red scraps and used them just in the size they were. With some trying I got a pleasing design. Again the seam allowances are on the right side and the thread ends are not hided, but short cut. 

I embellished the quilt with little red feltballs and when I embroidered very much beads. Sometimes I throw a lot of beads on my quilts and then I don't have the heart to embroider them. I fear it may be to much. This time I did the opposite and got wild with embroidering beads. I just set a space, there the beads should be.

The background is self dyed cotton.

My Space Your Space Our Space

My first thought when I saw our theme SPACE, were of those wonderful pictures NASA and others have given us from the outer space. Just like some of our hand dyed fabrics, especially some of the ice and snow dyed ones. But of course I needed something more.
In April, my daughter and I had a weekend in London and Manchester. She wanted to go to the Backstreet Boys concert in Manchester, and I wanted to visit the Harry Potter experience at Leavesden.
Well, we went together on both places. And of course, there were a bit of shopping!
Walking in the streets of London, the idea suddenly came to me. This was her space, and mine, and we had them together, so this trip ended as our space.
I decided to use photos I had taken at the concert and during the studio-tour. Transferred them to fabric, cut the in strips and bonded them to some fusible wadding. Unfortunately, the photo transfers were not so bright as I wanted, so I put a piece of blue organza on top to give it a bit more colour. I then finished this part with some stitching on top, running stitches and french knots.
The background fabric I had chosen, emphasizes the colours of the photos. For the quilting, I went for machine-embroidered lettering, inspired by Laura Kemshall. Because of the size, 15"x15", I could not use too bold letters, but I think I found a font that suits the size. And to give this background a bit more life, I put in some running stitches in some of the letters with the turquoise from the pictures.
Instead of bonding the photo-part to the background, I wanted it to have more depth, so I finished it with a blind fold and attached it loosely with stitches from the back.

and a close-up: