The crow feather quilt is done and up

I have just finished the crow feather quilt I have been working on. I photographed it hanging on nails on the barn door.
I want to talk a bit about the techniques I used on each of the panels. Most of the techniques I used I learned from viewed Lyric Kinard's DVD "Surface design sampler platter"

This panel was started with a solvent transfer. The crow image in the center was first copied on a copier which used carbon based toner. .I darkened the image using a black fabric paint pen. transferred the image to a piece of plain muslin, untreated, using Citra-Solve. I then used Heat n Bond on the back of the image to fuse the image onto the black background. Then I scanned three crow feathers I had been keeping tucked in the sun visor of my car for a few years. I printed the image on a used dryer sheet that was ironed on to freezer paper. I stitched the dryer sheet on top of the crow image and used two crow stamps I hand carved (see last tutorial for directions). Then a stenciled on the spiral shape using a stencil I cut from an Avery Note tab. The paint was latex pearl white metallic ( their name for it) This process will be covered in my next tutorial being posted in a few weeks.

 

This panel was done using a solvent transfer like in the first panel. I then stamped crow images I hand carved using ordinary latex craft paint. I double hand-stitched around the image suggesting air currents which ravens glide on. The thread was a heavy turquoise metallic.

This photo was taken before the quilt was assembled but looks better than the outdoor shot. For this panel I used a light table to trace the images of two of the feathers onto untreated muslin. I used a permanent fine point Micron pen. Then I free motion stitched over the ink lines and did some free motion details inside the feather with turquoise tinsel thread from Coats and Clark called Glitz. It was a dream to sew with. I then used ink to stamp a commercial stamp with feathers on it in the lower right corner and ink stamped one of my crow stamps on the upper left. Probably won't do that again.

For the top boarder of the quilt, I laid out a strip of black fabric after attaching the three panels with 3" strips. I eye balled where the centers of the panels would fall on the top boarder and stamped my feather stamp using light silver metallic latex craft paint. I later hand beaded the shafts of the three feathers with a unique black bead that is black and coated with clear glass giving it that unique metallic look.

I stitched the panels and boarders together with batting (warm n natural) and black backing and hand beaded all the boarders. On the upright boarders I used glossy black bugle beads in the "Chicken Scratch" pattern. and the upper and lower boarders were done with random gloss black and the black crystal beads I used on the feathers.

 

This is the quilt hanging in very poor light in my foyer. I decided to use black fabric tabs to suspend the quilt from a tree branch. I think the crows and ravens would approve.