Sewing an Art Quilt with Hand Dyed Batting and Hand Quilting

I love this quilt. The idea for it came when I was researching different kinds of batting for hand quilting and different kinds of wool for needle felting. I thought, what if I used a beautiful wool and silk blend fiber for the batting? It’s called a ‘batt’ anyway. Isn’t this what they used before technology gave us modern batting?

The top layer of the quilt (except for the butterfly applique) is very thin and sheer so you can see the curly hand-dyed fibers. It’s so primitive, don’t you think?

The butterfly applique is cut from fabric pieced in a crazy-quilt style using lots of fabric scraps.

Anyway, I submitted this quilt to an art quilt show and it was not accepted. I’m kind of sad and mad. Mad at myself because I must not have given a good enough description and they might have thought the top layer was wholecloth, not the fibers showing through. And sad because maybe they did understand my technique and they still didn’t feel that my quilt was good enough. I’ll hang it in my bedroom (because I do love it) and perhaps I’ll submit it to another show if one comes up. 

See more of my hand quilted quilts:

• Easy Hand Quilted Baby Quilt from a Fabric Panel

• My Charm Pack Cherry Quilt