Junque Queen

Junque Queen was created as a result of a found object art challenge (which became know as the FART challenge!)  from Conversations in Cloth, an art quilt group from the Fox Cities area.  The challenge was to walk a mile on our city streets.  Anything that you found during the walk was fair game to incorporate into a quilt or hanging.  The other two rules were: You could use muslin and one 'focus' fabric.

Detail from lower right corner.

I rust dyed some muslin (from the junk I found of course!) and found a lovely batik to coordinate with it.  My queen includes a rusty nail (magic wand), parts of a soda can (smile, flower parts and crown), a chex mix chip bag (right side out for body, inside out for stars), several coffee stirrers (flower stem and hands), pipe insulation (hair) and some snaps (earrings picked right out of the gutter.  They were covered with horrible pink fabric and rusting though.  everything else is cut from the batik fabric.  I also incorporated phrases and sayings that had to do with found object art.  See detail.

As a matter of interest, Conversations in Cloth is now on-line as Creative Gatherings.  Please check out the site and feel free to join the discussions.  

Life's Necessities

Coffee & Chocolate, Fabric and Friends.......

That's the title of a piece I completed in November for the Evergreen Quilt Camp Challenge.  The wallhanging/table runner uses paper pieced coffee cups that I designed at least 10 years ago for an anniversary challenge for another guild that I belonged to in another city, along with a box of chocolates based on some of my favorites.  The chocolates lie in a bed of gold lame and use various scraps of fabric and trim along with new and old buttons.  I was also able to use my alphabet decorative stitch function for the machine quilting, programming in Coffee & Chocolate, Fabric & Friends.  All in all it was a fun piece to make.

Finished Piece  12" X 20 1/2 "

Chocolate box detail in the production stage

Detail of Paper pieced cup and stitching