Grandma's Wallpaper an art quilt with sweet memories

 

My newest piece was inspired by a scrap of wallpaper in my Grandparents farmhouse. The house is a 1880's farmhouse now just a ruins. The house has been vacant for around 50 years.  During a walk through many years ago I photographed a piece of the old wallpaper, I have no idea what year the wallpaper was hung but I think it may have been when the house was first built.  I've always wanted to do something with the wallpaper image, so I'm very excited about this piece.  

I hope you enjoy Grandma's Wallpaper.

Above is the inspiration photo.  As you can see the wallpaper is water damaged and faded but I still think it's beautiful! 

I started with fabric which I lightly colored with a random wash of Tsukineko Inks brown and green inks. I was trying to get the feel of all the damage and aging that appears on the wallpaper.

 

I next used the same dyes to paint in the brown decorations.

Flowers and leaves were added with fabric scraps and fused to the background.

Sheer netting and lace were added over the flowers to help hold small pieces in place.

A heavy amount of stitching was added to make pieces permanent.

In this photo of the back you can see that I used one layer of batting to do a first layer of free motion quilting. I then added a second layer of batting the size of the whole quilt and a second round of quilting.

This photo shows the quilting finished but before the edges are turned to make the binding. You can also see the light gray background fabric in this photo.

The above four photos are details of the beadwork used throughout the piece.

Finished size: 12" X 18"

Above photo is a view of my Grandparents farmhouse.

This was a very personal project for me. It's also a image I plan to revisit again in the future.

 I hope you enjoyed Grandma's Wallpaper! Thanks for stopping by and have wonderful day!