My Work, in Quilting Arts Magazine's "From Sketch to Art Quilt" Reader Challenge!

Back in November, when I received the beginning of my Quilting Arts subscription, I was excited to see a reader challenge called "From Sketch to Art Quilt." Exactly the perfect challenge to start with! At the time I was drawing a lot of adorable monsters onto the yellow lined paper pads available at my job, so I decided to turn one of those sketches into the basis for my quilt.  I had been having fun for a while already with quilts based on various monsters and "fictional animals."

My work, featured in a magazine!

I scanned the sketch at high resolution and printed it out in cotton in two sections, just for fun. The size of the quilts in this challenge is 8 by 10 inches, so in theory I could have printed the monster all on a single piece of cotton, but I knew I was going to be monoprinting on top of the inkjet, and I wanted to have the option of an image in which the underlying monster drawing appeared to flow seamlessly across the whole quilt while its background broke abruptly into two sections.  In the end, the monoprinting that I did, with a Gelli Arts reusable "gelatin" plate, ended up looking similar on both parts of the image. I created a mask for the monster from freezer paper, ironed it into place on each piece of the monster body, then had fun playing around with my Gelli Arts plate. Once my printing was complete, I put the quilt together, with all kinds of added details including embroidery and laminated images.

Quilting Arts June/July 2012 Issue

I was super excited to have my quilt accepted into this particular Reader Challenge, and sent it off to the folks at Quilting Arts, along with the original sketch. They do their magazine photography in-house, and took very good care of my quilt which they eventually returned to me along with a copy of the issue. 

"Monster Portrait: Reginald"

Title: "Monster Portrait: Reginald"
Materials: various commercial fabrics, inkjet printed cotton, acrylic paint, laminated imagery, metal eyelets, embroidery floss, buttons
Dimensions: 8" by 10"
Date: 2012