Taking Flight 3CS JQ 4/52


This is my second piece in the Art Quilt Blog's journal quilt challenge (theme "highly prized") and the 4th of my journal quilts for the 3 Creative Studio's journal quilt challenge.




I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do before I began, so I pulled fabrics I thought I might use  from my scraps. Some tea-dyed fabric, some bright brassy golds and some old golds, bits of dark shiny stuff, even more bits of shiny white and gold stuff, a piece of white and gold leather and piece of patterned silk.



And when I was done fussing with most of that - my background looked like this. As you can see the leather and patterned silk didn't make the cut.



I then tried my hand at various patterns of wings (you can see some of the lines from previous attempts) as if often the case with me; these things usually work better if I just take a deep breath and cut freehand, which is easy to do when it's "only" some tea stained cotton broadcloth, not always as easy to trust myself when it's expensive fabric or something I won't get again. While I typed this however, a solution came to me - free-hand cut the pattern on paper first. Doh!  (It's a good thing I'm cute.  lol)

Anyway - after all that, I basted the wings on.




Then it was time for the quilting.  I used a varigated metallic thread in shades of pine green, sultry slate blue and a dark rose, along with a silky poly gold-coloured threat, and quilt it up in closely spaced, simple arcs.




Like so.

And then came the fun part - making the feathers for the wings!



I started out with all of these scraps of iridescent whites and both dull and shiny golds, which I cut down into:



tiny rough feather/leaf shapes.  I started laying them out in a regular pattern on my wings, but realized at some point, that if I just kind of piled them on without paying too, too much attention, the effect was the same and was a lot less work then number the feathers and drawing a pattern on paper. So that's what I did.



I hand stitched them on with clear monofilament thread, and it was done.


I chose "wings" as my theme for Highly Prized for a couple of reasons. The first reason is because my spirituality is something that I prize highly about myself.

Although my spirituality is quite serious in some ways, I have quite a sense of humour about it well. So, though I am most likely to refer to it as The Universe I often call it The Flying Spaghetti Monster or sometimes, The God of Your Understanding. (Very short version of a very long [over 20 years!] story - I was raised a Baptist, took religious studies as part of my double major in University, decided they were all [more or less] the same and therefore all silly; came 'round to the belief they were all [more or less] the same, and were therefore a valuable part of human experience, one which I, in particular, needed in my own way and form. Although my Baptist family and former congregation members would be horrified at the form that spirituality takes in its current incarnation!) As "wings" are a kind of icon of Western religions and easily understood to represent the G/god of whatever your understanding is, I thought they were a good choice to represent my personal spirituality.

And my second reason for choosing wings is for the metaphorical meaning of "wings" - the idea that *insert your thing here* gives us "wings". That they sustain/lift/allow us to perform/do/live in the way we want to. In my case, my own ability to stand up after I've been knocked down, rise above personal tragedy and experience-proven belief that the best way to get anywhere is to start walking in the direction of where you want to go and to continue in that way until you get there - are my personal "wings"; summed up neatly in the knowledge that "I am enough".

Belief in my personal empowerment, hand in hand with my belief in a spiritual power are what give me wings - and are indeed highly prized by me.

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