Finished!

Well, we've finally reached January 5th and 6th, the two days the country has been careening towards since election day.  I don't know about you but I find current events extremely interesting and could spend the whole day at my computer reading news accounts and following Twitter.  But I've only got about another twenty years of good living ahead of me (if I'm lucky) and I'm not going to waste a day of it following the constant fast breaking news that truly is outside of my "sphere of influence" even if it is fascinating.   

So, let me show you how my Canyonlands quilt turned out.    Ta Da!    

Just as a reminder, I first wrote about this piece on November 14 when I described how I had made images of rock art we saw in Utah and wanted to combine them with special fabrics I had collected. 

I wrote about it on November 16 and on December 11, when the top was complete and I was considering stitching options. 

I knew I wanted to add hand stitching, a technique which was out of my comfort zone, so I made the three smaller pieces shown in the photo to experiment on.  That turned out to be a good decision.  I wouldn't say my hand stitching is perfect, but it is uniquely mine and I think it adds a great deal to the piece. 

Here's a detail of one of the blocks. 

And another, this one combining hand and machine stitching on the circle.  

As does this one.  I have to say that I love the circular pattern I stitched in at the bottom.  

 Here are the other rock art blocks.  I made all of them by using Shiva oil paintstik on freezer paper stencils which I drew from photos I took in Moab, Utah.  

In the end I didn't use much machine stitching, adding it primarily in the non-pictorial blocks.  Don't you love that bit of turquoise. 

As I stitched I realized that I was making marks in an artistic way, much like the ancient people did on the rocks in the SW canyonlands, so I decided to officially name this piece Maker's Mark 2.  

Here's the first Maker's Marks which I finished in 2019 and also uses painted, stamped, and stitched marks.  

I still have the three small "experiment on" pieces to finish up.  Here they are. 

My goal is to complete them this month.   I also want to quilt up another finished top AND I started a top out of beautiful leftover batik pieces of fabric.  

I seem to be in a creative rush lately!  The coming vaccinations have made me realize that I'd better use more of our current free time "at home" to be in the studio.  Soon enough we'll be out and about again!