Kissy Fish Full, Nov. 2009

Back in the Quilting Arts Dark Ages, they showed some embroidery stitches over a series of pages. Somehow those embroidery stitches combined with a viewing of  quilt artist Susan Carlson’s work on Simply Quilts inspired me to get started on Kissy Fish.

As an aside: I am not getting back to the bleary photos, this piece is really, no REALLY, hard to photograph with the equipment I have.

This piece is covered with shiny things that reflect the light: beads, french ribbon, thread with metallic bits. It is on the list to be professionally photographed. Anyway.

Kissy Fish, detail 1

The stitches I used most frequently on this piece are called Feather Stitch. It was highlighted in Quilting Arts #1. It was really fun to see how the stitches added to the piece and helped it develop. It was fun to see how I could make each bit of kelp different with beads, varying widths of thread, etc.

Kissy Fish, detail 2

One of the things I knew about this piece was that it wasn’t intended to be a masterpiece. It was intended to be a test. It has turned out much better than a test.

I also never intended it to be hung as a quilt is hung. I always intended that it would be framed and hung like a piece of traditional art. That is still my plan.

I think the hand embroidery is mostly done. As I do on many of my Pamela pieces, I went about the process backwards. I did the embroidery first and now am thinking I need to do more quilting.  Machine quilting. I’ll have to seriously think about it, because I don’t want to break the beads or my careful stitching.