Stepping Out of the Box

I do not consider myself to be an "art quilter" or an "artist", but when I received some new toys a few weeks ago (silk and canvas that are ready to run through a printer), I decided to marry together my digital scrapbooking, regular scrapbooking, and quilting skills to create this mixed-media piece. It's way outside of my normal box, but it was such fun that I think I'm going to alter my normal box so I do more of it.

Several digital papers were used as the background for the digital alphabet. I printed these on silk, then quilted them onto batting (no backing) using various variegated threads. I then outlined each rectangle with chenille fibers.

I painted a 16x20 inch artist's canvas with acrylic and alcohol ink, then layered it with squares of digital papers that were printed, punched, and inked. I added a few gems for a bit more sparkle.

The large square is a mini-quilt, of sorts. It was made by printing another digital paper, framed with two digital frames stacked on top of each other, onto sticky-backed canvas. (I had to fool my printer a bit, but it worked!) I adhered the canvas to batting and quilted it using the motifs in the digital paper: longitude and latitude lines, the postmark in the upper right corner (now hidden), the leaf image, and the flower.

The frames were accentuated with a variety of fun fibers. I used photo hangers to string it onto shimmery ribbon, which is stapled to the artist's canvas frame (16x20 inches). I felt it still needed something in the bottom left corner, so i used letter stamps and some Staz-on ink to put some of my creative goals onto it. The spot above the word "layouts" still looks a little bare to me, and I think I'm going to add a thread-painted dragonfly I created in Susan Brittingham's embellishment class through Quilt University.

This piece lives in my office where I can see it while i'm working at the sewing machine or the computer. If you're interested in a complete list of materials, you can find it here.