Rita's Mystery of the Mask

Perhaps this small story should start with my thought processes of choosing the word MYSTERY.  This past year our quilt guild had invited a quilt artist that specializes in Crazy Quilts and after seeing her beautiful work, I had wanted to try my hand at this technique.  The opulence of the Crazy Quilt, the beads, the ornaments, the glitz, put me in mind of New Orleans's Mardi Gras.  And of course, many of the revelers are masked.  So my vision was to put a mask on top of a Crazy Quilt background.  So if this was to be my Material Mavens project, what word would perhaps portray this piece?  This is how I came to propose the word MYSTERY.  My husband, in trying to understand where I was going with this, as it was under construction, commented about two masks often representing two aspects of the human condition, that of Joy and Tragedy which are usually portrayed as white and black.  I then decided to add the second mask with a button tear.

The fabrics are four colors of cotton sateen: green, purple, navy, and brown.  I made four squares trying to alternate the colors to make it as 'crazy' as possible.  I have many, many old linens and crocheted items that were made by my family or were 'found' items.  I had pulled these together in the hopes of making a large Crazy Quilt at some point.  I dug into this stash for this little quilt.  Pieces of old doilies (remember doilies?), pillowcase trim, dresser scarf edging and other like fabrics were inserted into the seams of the sateen.  This was then embellished with fancy stitches in many colors sewn on by machine with rayon machine embroidery thread.  The four squares were then stitched together,edge to edge,  and the seams covered with ribbon.  The masks are constructed of heavy duty Pellon interfacing covered with heavy satin, trimmed with fringe.  These are attached with permanent fabric glue to the Crazy Quilt background so they stand out dimensionally from the background.  The final touch was the addition of period style art buttons.

As with all the rest of my Material Mavens offerings, this is also done as a gallery wrap around a twelve inch by twelve inch by three fourth inch deep frame.  The second picture is to show this dimension.