Haven’t added a quilt to our store in a long time.  But on a recent trip to New York, we came across 5 absolutely gorgeous pieces of fine wool in some remnant boxes in a shop in the fabric district.  They were so lovely, even though already cut into, that we couldn’t bear to cut them up and so are using them as the ‘canvases’ for a series of five festive art quilts.  This is the first of the five.

 

This gorgeous aqua-blue wool background had been cut away in two corners, so we filled those gaps with complimentary squares of blue satin.  The ‘rhino and pea’ theme came because we had a few semi-circles of various fabrics left over from lining the interior of a compartmented chest.  One of these was a bumpy grey fabric and it inspired the rhino motif.  But that fabric didn’t look right with some of the others we wanted to use, so we instead opted to create the rhinos out of other materials.  The feature rhino is from a textured, translucent, shimmering blue-grey circles fabric, cut out with aid of a template.  The other two semi-hidden rhinos are hand drawn profiles on handmade paper that were inserted behind some pea plants so they could peek out of the pea forest.  

 

The forest of pea plants consists of assorted semi-circles of felt, fleece, and cotton solids and prints.  To these are added a few accent topper pieces of similar materials.  They are affixed with fusible webbing and then secured with decorative pea tendril stitching from shimmering green embroidery thread.  This tendril work also serves as quilting stitching and is supplemented by single point hidden stitching in the open areas of the quilt for extra support.  This quilt top is then bordered by a colorful series of felt and fleece strips in greens, satin blues and a little red to accent the pea plant forest colors and it is also hand stitched.

 

This quilt is supported by a hidden dowel in a sleeve on the back and hangs from a copper wire.  It measures 28” high x 28” wide.