Blogger's Quilt Festival

Soular Flair

This was a collaborative art quilt. Several years ago one of the group members (africanamericanquilters@yahoogroups.com), brought up the idea of creating art quilts. There were many of us who had never ventured into this realm of quilting, but we became intrigued at the idea. Carole suggested that we work in collaborative teams and keep journals about our experience.
As the deadline loomed near I was in a bit of a panic because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to present. I finally decided that I would let the fabric talk to me and I would go with the flow.
Off to City Quilters and sure enough the fabric started talkin’ and I was busy listening. One piece of fabric stood out and I decided I would make it the focus of the project. The fabric was black with metallic gold music notes and staffs. Also at that point the title of the project came to mind, Soular Flair.

There were many techniques that I wanted to use on the project, my mind was swimming. However, above all I wanted to hand quilt the piece and include beading.

The name Soular Flair was a play on the term for solar activity that takes place on the sun. The music note fabric was the sun’s face and I chopped the blues and black to give the effect of outer space. As for the beading aspect of the quilt, I decided that I would recreate the constellations that I could see from home. The constellations were the Big and Little Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Orion.
To add dimension to the quilt I used the technique of trapunto, stuffing the profile, and this made the face pop.
The collaborative part of the project came in where by after you finished your center you were to pass it off to your partners for them to add their ideas to your project. After the additions were completed the piece was sent back to the original artist and they were to add the finishing touches. I used the quilting pattern called Baptist Fan, because I felt it represented the ebb and flow of life. All in all it was a great project