Green Garden Gate mini art quilt

My final mini art quilt is finished! The first three were enjoyable to make, and not too difficult, but this one was tough. I had decided to try one last time before giving up - and then I made it.

Green Garden Gate

I had the perfect background, which was probably part of my problem, but didn't know what to do with it. I started by embroidering some of the designs. Chain stitches for the swirls and French knots over them.

Now what? When in doubt, add a twig or two!

After running some errands, I cut a couple of twigs from one of our trees in the yard. I decided that this last attempt would incorporate some weaving. I attached the branches to the fabric using green embroidery floss and placed the floss across the two twigs to make a warp.

Weaving with many types of yarns

I took out some of my lovely yarn and started weaving. I then couched some more yarn to the twigs themselves and then beaded them. I still had no clue what I was doing.

Woven and beaded garden gate

Next I used a piece of the background fabric that I had folded, accordion style. I attached the two ends of that around a little piece of branch that was sticking out, trimmed it and then used this lovely green and blue voile fabric inside it to make a flower.

The voile was attached to the outside of the flower and beads were added both inside the flower, around the edges where both fabrics met, and on top of the inside fabric.

Using the branch as a support for the flower

I tucked a lighter voile fabric behind the woven gate and sewed on a lotus flower shell(?) button to add a little bit of interest. Finally I added the gorgeous turtle button on the bottom. At that point, I called it finished!

It's too bad that I didn't get to take a photo of all four minis together. Here are the other three.

Mellow Yellow, Blue Moon and Peek-a-boo Red

What I learned

• I'm not sure how I feel about this piece. It gave me such trouble that I don't know if it's ingenious or plain bizarre. 
• There were definitely many lessons learned.
• First and foremost, don't attach the background to the canvas until you finish embroidering, sewing, beading, etc. It just made everything very difficult.
• The reason I did that is because the twigs needed to be held down to weave. In hind sight, I could have taped them to a flat surface and then added them to the background!
• I don't know what to make of the flower. It probably could have used more contrast but I wasn't sure that I wanted it to show too much.
• If you suspect that this mini was late - you're correct. We got an extension, thank goodness!
• I feel like I had to try to hard to make this one. I think that I was focusing on the green fabric too much and just didn't know what to do with it.
• I also think that four minis using mostly one colour was a huge stretch for me - I would much rather be told what technique or material to use than to be bound by a specific colour.
• Making four of anything is probably a few too many 😊 for me.

Related links

• Slow stitching - embroidery and a red mini art quilt, January 28, 2019
• Mini art quilts and slow stitching, January 14, 2019
• A few mini quilts to make, January 5, 2019
• Out of the Box Fibre Artist Group

Linking parties
This post will be linked to some cool linky parties. Why not check them out? Monday Making, Design Wall Monday, Moving it Forward, What I Made Monday, Linky Tuesday, Tuesday Colour Linky Party, Let's Bee Social, Midweek Makers, Needle & Thread Thursday, Off the Wall Friday, TGIFF,

Project details

Green Garden Gate
5" x 7"
Materials: twigs, cotton, buttons, toile, embroidery thread, yarns, beads
Techniques: weaving, embroidery, beading







Reminder: The Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop is on this week. My turn is Thursday, so please come back to see my Mola post! Until then, here is the link to the blog hop.