I really liked the song title I was given all those months ago, when I thought the challenge and idea was something I could get my teeth into. After all, I knew I had the perfect fabric somewhere in my stash. As soon as I saw the title, I knew what I wanted to do, how I wanted to do it.

I’ve long been interested in embellishment and also in mixed media techniques, and I’ve been saving sweet papers in order to use them in a quilt / textile piece for some time. This should give you a clue to what my song title could be.

As my previous blogs have stated, I like to make notes – and this quilt was no exception. Something like this needs planning, and it is at the planning stage I put all my thoughts and ideas down on paper. Some of these ideas will make it to the finished piece, whilst others will fall by the wayside – rejected. In the case of this song, I put my initial ideas on paper, and then I did some research into the song afterwards. I was surprised to hear that this song caused some controversy; the singer songwriter composed it, with the idea of the blending of words from different beliefs – which certainly can be controversial. However, it sparked a lot controversy later with a lawsuit; it was all surrounding copyright infringement due to its similarity to the song “He’s So Fine”. This is not something I was aware of previously, and when I considered the symbols I wanted to use, I thought the controversy angle was covered.

Like many of my art pieces, this grew organically. I didn’t stick rigidly to my original ideas, instead allowing it to grow and develop as I created. Some of my ideas came through at the Bloggerati retreat where I spotted some fabric I really liked (and bought, thank you Jonathan Dymond) and decided it was perfect for this quilt (the fabric can be seen in the first photo above).

I pieced the sweet papers on some heavy calico, sometimes scrunching them a bit, overlapping them, and trying to make sure all the foundation fabric was covered. I wanted the papers to be seen, the different labels. When I think of the song, I think of streams of sunlight (is that why I used a chocolate orange wrapper in the centre like the sun?), and so I added some fabric sun flames on top of the sweet papers. I wasn’t sure how well the sweet paper piece would sew to border fabrics, and so I added some shot organza; it tempered the brightness of the sweet papers, and I thought it also tied in with some lyrics: “I really want to see you” – the organza suggested a hidden layer, something a bit ethereal (at least, that is how I thought of it after I added the organza!).

Once I had added the borders, I added more sun flames – I wanted these to extend from the background into the borders, and then added some religious symbols – the controversial side of the quilt. When deciding on symbols, I use the internet and save pictures to the computer, then put them into a word document to resize them, finally tracing them onto fusible web. The applique was all raw edge, using a straight stitch – this works well for art quilts; when appliqueing shapes on items that will be used often (e.g. bed quilts, Christmas stockings) I prefer to use a satin stitch. All the symbols used fabric from my stash – fabric that I mostly had to hunt for, as it was in my ‘I Spy’ fabric box, which was buried under other boxes – and it had to have a sweet theme.

The penultimate stage was the quilting; I really enjoyed myself here, choosing a backing fabric that makes me thing of peppermint creams, and minty lollipops. The whole piece is quilted free motion, firstly with flame shapes, and then going round the symbols. Finally I added some lyrics from the song “Hallelujah” (I quilted this 5 times), “Hare Krishna”, “maheshwara” amongst others (the song title should be really obvious now!). Only by practising free motion writing do you get better at it – and I used a spiral shape to move to other areas of writing – a shape like a large flat lollipop. The colour of thread – red,orange, yellow, pink variegated (from the Cotty range that The Cotton Patch used to stock) – just like sweets and flames to my way of thinking.

I had considered cutting back some of the organza after quilting, to reveal what is underneath, or perhaps even using a fine tipped soldering iron to burn away some of the organza. I decided against this for two reasons; once I had quite heavily quilted the piece the background showed through a lot more, so I didn’t think it was necessary. The second reason was that I didn’t want to burn through the sweet papers. I’d like to add here, that while I was quilting the flames and really enjoying the process, I was also thinking “WOW! I feel like a proper quilt artist / textile artist!”; perhaps this was because I had no fear in just going for it – I hadn’t practised the flames on paper first, I just went for it – much like I did with the rest of the piece.

The final decision – what binding to use? Should I use binding, or should I use facings? I always audition binding fabric before making a decision; this time the decision was quite difficult. I had originally thought about using bright rainbow binding, or even a galaxy style fabric, but they were just not right. In the end I went for white – it seemed to work well, and gives a bit of a glow to the edge.

In the interest of full disclosure, and being a method quilter (!), I did find it necessary to eat sweets whilst creating this piece – and I got my husband involved as well; he was willing to eat some Parma violets, so that I could use the wrappers in the piece!

Can you tell what it is yet? My Sweet Lord

Related posts:

Merry Christmas Wye Knots Christmas Challenge Birds,Bees and Butterflies. UKQU Show Galleries  My song title challenge