Quilt Alliance Entry Start to Finish

In 2013 the Quilt Alliance will be celebrate 20 years of documenting, preserving and sharing quilt history.  Twenty was the selected theme for the 2013 competition.  Pondering on the theme lead me to think about what I was doing when I was twenty years old.  I spent the entire fall semester of my junior year in college studying art history in Florence, Italy.    I walked past the Duomo every day.  Most days trying to quickly navigate my way through the squared to get to class on time.  I remember one particular day telling myself to slow down and take it all in and remember the amazing sights I walked past every day. 

I would have liked to use a photo I took but none really would have worked for what I had in mind.  So I found this photo on line taken by a gentleman, Denis Jarvis, and allowed for a very generous use of his photos.  I cropped the photo and had it printed on fabric via Spoonflower.

Next I created a raw edge pieced border that continued the colors and texture from the photo.  I used a variety of fabrics from prints to batiks and tulle.

I used my embellisher machine to punch all of the raw edges down to temporarily hold them to the muslin foundation.   Love how the fabrics are lining up with the photo. 

With the fabrics punched in place I embroidered all of the seams 

In progress shot of the embroidery.  I love the soft edge that the embellisher creates when joining the fabrics.  I just leave most of the wisps and fraying fabric in place under the embroidery to enhance the soft easy color transitions.

With the embroidery complete,  I saw that somethign was needed to break up the sky in the photo.  So I used hand quilting to extend some of the embellishment lines through the background as well as quilting around various elements of the Dome.  I also added some dark stem stitch lines to the photo to sharpen up some of the elements. 

hand quilting in progress

The binding is a dark brown fabric and creates a nice frame for the entire piece.  I absolutely love how this piece turned out,  it brought back fond memories and great enjoyment in doing all of the hand work. 

Just need to add a sleeve and the label and this beauty will be ready to ship off to the Quilt Alliance to be auctioned off this fall.