Rhonda Bracey: At Random

When I was in Houston last November for the International Quilt Festival, I took lots of classes, mostly related to art quilts. One was a full-day class with Melinda Bula, whose work I’ve admired for a long time, especially after I saw it up close and personal when she taught at Empty Spools Asilomar in February 2014. At Asilomar I took Pam Holland’s 5-day class (no regrets about doing that!), but it was a toss-up between Pam’s class, Melinda’s class, and Susan Carlson’s class — all great teachers, all techniques I wanted to learn, but all on the same week!

So when I saw that Melinda was teaching a one-day class at Houston, I jumped at the chance and was lucky enough to get a spot in her ‘Fabulous Fusible Flowers: Hibiscus’ class. I made good progress on my piece, and finished it off at home by the end of November, except for the binding, hanging sleeve, and label. Well, now it’s all done!

I did some fairly heavy ‘thread painting’ on it, but left some of the yellow areas to ‘pop’ — just like the ridges on a real hibiscus flower. For the pollen heads, I couched some fuzzy yellow yarn, then lightly touched the tops of them with a red Copic marker. The patterns and all fabrics for the flower and the stem were from the kit Melinda supplied for the class (each person chose a different coloured kit for their hibiscus — I chose the yellow, though I could have chosen pink or purple). I supplied the background fabric and the green fabrics for the leaves. And yes, there are HUNDREDS of pieces of fabric fused in the petals…

I’ll put this piece into a couple of competitions/exhibitions, then I’ll make it available for sale. The size is 80 cm wide (31.5 inches) by 65 cm high (25.5 inches).

This art quilt is now available for sale from my Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/618945129/yellow-hibiscus-art-quilt

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