Fibre Art Quilt ... Grape Leaves on Linen

This is a new art quilt created by painting natural linen with Shiva Paintstiks. I collected grape leaves from vines in my neighbourhood and used them to make stencils that I then arranged across the surface of the fabric.  I used a variety of greens and metallic copper paintstiks to get lots of colour variation in the leaves and then used some of the same colours to create subtle bunches of grapes.

The leaves are heavily stitched with free motion machine stitching and then I outlined the grapes and added tendrils to the vines.  The background quilting has been done in a columnar format, with some of them on an angle, and then the spaces around the leaves and grapes are filled with hand seed stitches.

The piece measures about 20" square and hangs from a sleeve on the back.  The edges are finished with a turned facing for a contemporary look.

This piece is in my Etsy shop now (click on the link on the right side of this screen).

Vitis - Art Quilt with Grapes and Grape Leaves

A new art quilt is born! 

This has to be my favourite art quilt (maybe the latest is always the favourite) . . . I love the soft colour palette and the beautiful texture that ripples and swirls with the leaves and grapes.

 

The grape leaves are painted using metallic copper and moss green textile paints with stencils I made using local grapes leaves to get the shape just right. The grapes themselves were stamped using the end of a spool of thread.

There is lots of machine quilting and then my favourite seed stitches that I did by hand . . . it was such a relaxing piece to work on. I chose to add the botanical name for grapes "Vitis" to the left side. Here is a photo of a bit of the detail.