Saturday, October 14, 2017

Reaching Out

Reaching Out
Jane’s Reach Quilt

When I was diagnosed with lymphoma in July, I knew that I was going to need help dealing with the treatments and just surviving this ordeal. It was amazing to feel the outpouring of support from friends and family. Although I still have two more chemo treatments, I have been declared in complete remission.

I haven’t been shy about reaching out for help during this time. Therefore my challenge quilt is about reaching out. If you will allow them, people are more than happy to help you through a rough patch.

I started with white silk charmeuse. I drew around my hands on the paper side of freezer paper to create a pattern. When I ironed the silk to the plastic side of the freezer paper, I stabilized the silk and was able to see the pattern through the fabric.

Using my Inktense Blocks, I colored the hands. Then I colored in the background with very thin and pale textile paint. Next I wrote Reach over and over separated by stars on the fingers. This actually turned out to be rather futile work because you really can’t see the words easily.

At this point, I started quilting. Using a different pattern for each hand and a color that I felt was compatible, I quilted rather densely. For the background I chose a rainbow colored thread and used relatively straight line quilting.


My next move was to add more paint with the Inktense Blocks. I used wet on wet to get the colors to blend as I added colors to my hands. The added bonus to this was the quilting patterns really show up now. I think some of the paint settled in the thread which I like. I ironed Timtex on the back side to keep it flat.



 It was fun creating this little quilt. I was able to work on it in bits and pieces as I felt well enough to be up in the studio. Since I had to let it rest while the paint dried in different areas, I was able to let myself rest. But I still had the satisfaction of making something which gave me a boost. Please continue to pray for me as I go through two more chemo treatments. 


Reach for the Sun



This is on rusted fabric, monoprinted and thread-sketched. A few beads were added to the vine on the right. I used Inktense blocks to paint in some of the colours. Sari silk ribbons are used for binding.