Inspirational Quilt

I made an inspirational quilt this week.  I love adding uplifting words to my art that remind me of the good things in life. I started with a piece of white cotton fabric with a tight weave so that it is easy to paint. I painted loose flowers in light purple, let them dry and then heat set the paint.  I did the same for the dark purple flowers and the turquoise flowers I painted inside the dark purple and turquoise flowers with Stewart Gill Metamica paints in Moonlight and Heather Mist and the centers with a silver Lumiere textile paint. I love how these paints sparkle. They look marvelous in the sunshine. I stenciled the open area with the Amiens Plan Cathedral stencil with Stewart Gill Metamica paint in Moonlight. I let that paint dry and then heat set.  Heat setting between layers keeps the colors from mixing together when I want them to stay separate. I colored in the open areas with Derwent Inktense pencils and activated it with textile medium.  I left the light purple flowers white.  I let that dry and then heat set again. Next I squared up the dry fabric painting and cut a backing and batting. I bagged out the quilt to finish the edges.  I basted the batting to the wrong side of the backing fabric.  Then I placed the right sides of both fabrics together and stitched a narrow seam all the way around except for an opening on the bottom of the quilt. I trimmed the batting close to the seam lines and cut off the corners at a diagonal. I turned the quilt the right side out and pressed it.  I removed all the basting threads.  I pressed in the fabric edges on the opening too.  I slip stitched the edges closed. Next I used free motion stitching to sew with a dark purple thread around my painted flowers and I thread doodled in the open areas. I sewed around the light purple flowers with a turquoise thread and I thread doodled swirls in the petals. I wrote words on a piece of tracing paper and cut them out.  I used these to figure out the word arrangement. When I was happy with the arrangement I used a fabric pen to write words on the stenciled side of the quilt. I used free motion stitching to write over the words in a thick variegated purple thread. I free motion stitched, with a blue thread that matched the Metamica paint, around the words. I steam pressed the whole quilt to smooth out the wrinkles. The finished quilt is 9" X 13". I hope that you go and make your own inspirational piece of art. This quilt still needs a name.  If you have a suggestion you could leave me a note in the comments. After I decide how I want to hang this quilt and finish that portion this beauty will be for sale. Have a creative weekend, Janelle