Indian Textiles

Here is my first quilt. It is really a practice piece for another larger piece I am doing, and also a continuation from my entry for the Horizons CQ exhibition.
It is based on piles of textiles seen in a shop in Delhi. Most of the fabrics have been hand dyed and then printed, either block printed or screen printed. I have also added some old pieces of textiles that I bought from an old lady in a village in India. The shisha glass are made with sweet papers.

Within the circle

I know that for the whole year we have to make 4 quilts and yes, I have completed my 3rd one :-). No doubt I will end up with a lot more than 4 by the end of the year, but I am having fun with this theme.

For this quilt I started with a piece of black fabric which I had discharged with bleach. Most of the blacks discharged to a light brown/yellow color, but this one discharged to white. I quilted it with a red thread and added circles on it. The circles are made from commercial felt. After I stitched them to the background I added blanket stitch with a red thread of pearl cotton. Title is 'Within the Circle'.

Circles never end

Yes I know the total number of quilts for this year is 4,and I have completed my second one already :-). When I was working on my Onion quilt, I had another idea as well. Of course I could have waited till April to start with it, but I have time available at the moment, so why not start straight away. This quilt started out as one piece of snow dyed fabric. Added batting and a backing fabric and stitched the outlines. Turned everything around and cut an opening in the backing fabric close to the top. I cut a number of circles out of freezer paper and started playing around to found a interesting design. After that I stitched around the circles and removed the paper. The quilting I did on the rest of the quilt was just straight lines.
The next part was the scary part. I cut out the central part of the circles. If I had made a mistake I could have thrown the quilt away, but luckily everything went okay. Of course the color of the batting was white and this would show a bit, I used a pink marker to give the batting some color. With floss I hand stitched around the circles. The straight lines needed more quilting so I added lots of circles on it as you can see on the detail picture.
Years ago I found a capiz shell lamp in a garage sale. I did not have any use for the lamp, but I wanted the shells :-). These shells I added to the open spaces and this is how the quilt looks now:

 And a detail:

The quilting I did on this piece gave me lots and lots of thread ends. I could have connected the circles, but this would have give another look and that was not what I wanted. Size is 12"x24" (30x60 cm) and the title is Circles never end.

People # 1

My theme for this year is PEOPLE, so why not take a well-known person?
I hope you recognize him? I don't have to tell you the story of his live because you all know that, I suppose.

I took Tjeka cotton for the background just because it had the right color, but it is a bit thin and I hoped it wouldn't shine through, because I used a dark backing.

This fabric is from a dress I bought myself in South Africa, years and years ago. How relevant is that?
I used this once before as you can see on my blog http://www.ineke-rens.blogspot.com . Click on Galerie 2013.
"Africa" quilt.

The black commercial fabric is cut out and fused on the brown/orange fabric which I printed myself to get the exact color I wanted.  Together stitched on the background.
All freemotion quilted.

The stripes above and below are cut outs of the backing fabric.

I copied his signature. The only time it's allowed, I think.

I have to appologize because my english is bad. I hope you'll understand me.

Life is like an onion

My first quilt for this group started with a visit to the super market. I needed a big onion. Okay, I admit, I love onion soup, but this one I needed for stamping. I sliced the onion in 2 parts and let it dry for a couple of days so that the separate rings show better. In the mean time I prepared the fabric. The centre of the quilt is made from a piece of snow dyed fabric with a big black border around it. 

When the onion had dried enough I applied a thin layer of decoulorant plus on top (gold and bronze) and placed my stamp on the fabric.

This proces I repeated till I had a pleasing arrangement of 'circles'. After the decoulorant had dried I ironed it - a very smelly process -, but I was happy with the result. The circles I quilted with a gold metallic thread following the rings as much as possible. The other part of the quilt I quilted with a wavy grid using blue and black thread. This is how the completed quilt looks like:

 And a detail shot:

And yes I should have used a lint roller to remove the cat hair :-)
For the title I found inspiration in a quote by Carl Sandburg: 'Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.