polly  

POLLY
39.5” x 40”
Commercial cottons.  Machine pieced and quilted.

This quilt was made for a challenge among quilters on the About.com quilting forum, called ARTImage Challenge. 

The painting which was to inspire the challenge was Les Perruches by Jean Dupas.  I had no deep thoughts about the meaning of this picture, so did not try to interpret a feeling or an idea.  Instead, I played around with a new computer program (Kaleider), which I had recently downloaded.  It imports a picture and creates kaleidoscopes of various configurations. 

When I found one that I liked, and that appeared relatively easy to piece, I printed the image, and from there made a paper-piecing pattern.  I matched the colors as closely as I could to the colors in the section of the painting which I used as the basis of the kaleidoscope.  I tried a couple of new (to me) techniques. 

 
Small challenges like this are great for experimenting with new techniques.  The center black star has some silver stitching in the middle which was accomplished by bobbin drawing (putting decorative thread in the bobbin and monofilament on top) with the design drawn on Pellon Tear & Wash stabilizer. 

The stitching was done before the quilt was layered.  The other “new” thing for me was to quilt the large areas in the blue background with two threads going through the same needle.  I used a 40wt. Rayon and a metallic of the same color, with a #14 topstitch needle.  I had previously done a little of this for decorative stitching, but this is the first time I had tried it for free-motion quilting
 
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