Judy's Butterfly Garden

 

It is such a delight to see a butterfly flitting around the yard. I don’t have a lot of flowers in my yard, but the other day my 3 year old grandson and I were blessed to see a beautiful butterfly swoop by us. It was in a hurray, but we both saw it and enjoyed that little spot of color fly by us.

The large butterfly is a leftover from a mandala quilt I am working on. It didn’t turn out perfect for that quilt, but it works fine for this one. The way I made it was to use freezer paper for my template and cut out the sections of the butterfly. I thought about putting silk, satin, or lace under the cutouts, but I looked up from where I was sitting and saw a bag of Angelina fibers. I played with laying out the different colors on top of each other so that there are gold fibers, holographic ones, and some darker ones to give it interest. Once I had the fibers laid out I fused them together into a large sheet. From there I chose where I would get the prettiest look on the butterfly and cut that out to fuse onto the back of the butterfly.

I had another piece of fabric that had the other butterflies on them which made it easy to fuse and cut them out. 

The flowers were hours of struggle. I took down my box of fused fabric and just started cutting up slivers of fabric. Boy, was that ugly! Then I went back to my fun petal shapes and the flowers were more like the summer time flowers I grew up with. I tried different colored fabrics and on this small piece it was too much, so I used the same fabric on all three flowers. I truly only had a small piece of it that fabric and it has been a favorite for many years. Now that fabric is all gone, but it is in some of my favorite quilts.

The grass blades are slivers from a hand dyed piece I made many years ago. The background is an ombre fabric made by Caryl Bryer Fallert  called “Essentials” for Benartex.

I read this quote and thought it was a good reminder for us during this pandemic. We are definitely going through a change that we didn't choose. "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." ---Maya Angelou

Judy W's "Interwoven: Through the Ages"

"Interwoven: Through the Ages" 

by Judy Wedemeyer

My reference to 'through the ages' is an interweaving of past, present and future  projects and memories.  (Past) is highlighted by recycling vintage black wire beaded earrings.  The flower was one of many I made a few years ago while experimenting with melting black plastic fruit tray dividers into flower bases. I was planning on incorporating them into weatherproof yard art somehow.  Batik fabric in aqua and orange tropical colors are inspired by my daughters beach themed, Hawaiian destination wedding scheduled for April 2014. (Future)  And of course (Present) is the creation of this current challenge piece.

A foundation of mixed ephemera and threads from various art quilt projects were laid on dyed cheesecloth, interwoven and then sandwiched between two sheets of Water Soluble Solvy foundation.  Included materials are painted Ludura, upholstery threads, plastic netting, dyed silk cocoon pieces and dyed cheesecloth.

I bobbin stitched a variegated metallic thread while machine quilting with a clear mono-filament top thread in a wavy grid pattern.  Once stabilized, I cold water rinsed the Solvy away, towel pressed the 'fabric' and iron dried it between parchment paper.  The tissue paper and gold foil candy wrapper pieces were embedded after the wash and dry cycle.  Unfortunately I got heavy handed with the iron and melted the green netting pretty much into oblivion. : /

Quilt Basting Spray adhered the interwoven section to the orange batik background fabric.  I ironed fusible fleece batting (Thermolam) to the backside of the batik before bobbin quilting a diagonal wavy grid in metallic thread. After quilting, I sandwiched top and back right sides together, cut a small slit in the backing to pull right side out, and then fused my quilt label over the opening.  Final step was gluing and thread tacking the embellishments to the quilt top and beading the edges.  This quilt exemplifies what I enjoy most about art quilting ~ small experiment projects which incorporate recycling, hand beading, embellishments and surface design.