Second February Photo Quilt

Here's my second interpretation of a photo taken on Bellagio, Lake Como, in late 2007. This new piece is called Looking Back, and it is 20x16 inches. See the first quilt and the photo here. I totally love this new quilt, which brings together several techniques I've wanted to try, in one place.

First off, it is wholecloth -- one piece of fabric rather than pieced in any way -- and as such, is a piece of muslin that I "painted" with Caran d'ache Neocolor II watercolor crayons. Actually, I drew the scene with the crayons, then added water, and it became a watercolor painting on fabric.

After the fabric was dry and ironed to set the colors, I layered it with backing and batting, basted and then quilted it. The quilting is different for me, in that there's a lot less of it than there was on the first piece earlier this month. And I also quilted the color areas in a more general sense than I usually do, paying less attention to detail.

When it was all quilted, yesterday, I dabbed on metallic textile paints to give the impression of leaves, throughout. I used Lumiere, Setacolor Shimmers and Golden Fluid Acrylics.

I love the painterly quality of this piece, and so glad I finally experimented with painting the wholecloth and then quilting it.