The Endeavourers’ Reveal Day — Mosaic

Every quarter, our online group, The Endeavourers, posts the small art quilts that resulted from the quarterly challenge, and today is the day!

This time the theme was “Mosaic.”  Initially, I thought this would require ironing fusible web to the backs of relatively small pieces of fabric, then cutting them up into even smaller pieces of fabric.  Then I would have to pull off the backing paper from each tiny piece, then arrange them into a design, and re-iron.  I was not looking forward to it.

But fortunately, I came across the work of Colleen Ansbaugh.  In the Fall 2021 issue of Quilting Arts, she recommended starting with a large area of fusible web as a background!  And then placing small bits of fabric on top — no need to place fusible on each individual piece.  This sounded way more doable.  (If you click on the link, you will get to her website and the page that shows her mosaic portraits.)

So I had a technique to try; now I needed a subject —

Years ago, my mom decided that I liked mosaic jewelry, and she bought pieces for me whenever she saw them.

Three mosaic brooches.

Now that I have them displayed out in the open on my pin wreaths, they came to my attention and seemed like a perfect subject. It was interesting that all the flowers were made with essentially the same technique. I picked this one to recreate.

A vintage mosaic pin.

I followed Colleen Ansbaugh’s technique as closely as I could (although with larger pieces of fabric).  Once the pieces are fused down, she recommends using netting over the top to hold all the little edges down during quilting.  She uses black netting, but I thought that might dull the colors down too much.  I tried sparkly pink, cream, and yellow, and ended up using the yellow netting. The netting picked up the flash when I took the picture, but you can see that it does dull down the overall look quite a bit.

Before and after the netting layer was applied. You can see the circle of fusible webbing in the background.

I added more fusible web to the corners of the background fabric to hold the netting in place during stitching.

Once I had my quilt sandwich, I stitched between all the pieces with invisible thread; then I went back and did some thread sketching with different colors, to outline each piece.

Detail of the thread sketching.

I wanted to keep the rounded look of the original, so I didn’t bind this one; I am displaying this one in a large hoop. I really don’t like it that much, but it looks good in the thumbnail image.  🙂  And I definitely won’t be doing this technique again; it is too fiddly for me.  But as always, I enjoyed the mental challenge of trying a new technique.

To see what other participants have come up with, you can visit The Endeavourers.

 

Category : Applique, Quilting
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