Berberis, Bedazzled, Bedecked and Bedizened

SAQA has a travelling trunk show scheduled for next year- for the next THREE years, actually, and they are asking members to donate tiny mini art quilts to be part of that travelling show. I scratched my head for a long time but finally came up with an idea. You remember the red pictures I am working on? And, do you recall the lovely frosted Berberis leaves from the rest stop in Jellicoe, KY?

Here it is , in case you forgot!

Someone said, when I suggested I wanted to quilt this, that the frost would be hard to do. I agreed and decided to experiment, so, working within the 7" x 10" parameters of the SAQA request, I tried it.
Here is the result....

Here is the little quilt in its entirety- all 10 x 7  inches of it!

And here are a couple of detail shots so you can see what I did...

The frosty twigs

Gnarly, frosty twigs

And the frost bedizened ruby leaves.

I used bits of hand dyed and commercial fabrics for the berberis itself and a little piece of hand dye for the background. To do the frosty collar on the red leaves, I cut a piece of very pale grey commercial "batik" backed with Steam a Seam Lite. In fact, contrary to my normal practice, I used Steam a Seam Lite throughout. Then, I stitched with variegated cotton ( Sulky) all round the twigs and the leaves and then .... I switched to Superior's gorgeous metallic silver for the frost. On some of the darker twigs, I used a pale blue metallic thread. I "gilded the lily" a tad using my trusty Prismacolor" pencil crayons for just  a bit more "oomph" on the twig shadows. Now, of course, I need to "fix" the pencil crayon with my  Krylon acrylic fixative spray.

This is only Monday, Labour Day, but I am preparing this post for the next edition of the needleandthreadnetwork.blogspot.com which will be tomorrow afternoon. Check it out. There seem to be some interesting new contributors these days. Maybe they are just returnees, but they are new to me.