I am in the middle of teaching an online course on how to make this little art quilt (“House Rules 2” on joggles.com. It features my whole family, pets included. (Yes, I made myself skinnier and with fewer wrinkles!) The figures are drawn on white fabric with pencil, then colored in with watercolor pencils, and moistened with a wet paintbrush before drawing the outlines with a Micron Pigma pen. The amount of water in the paintbrush determines how much the color bleeds out. You can see this in the difference between the eye and the cheeks in my sun, below:
There is a ton of handwork in this piece. The figures are done with needleturn applique, and all the “chicken scratch” quilting in the background took about six hours to complete.
I framed this piece in an inexpensive frame purchased at Ikea, after stitching it to the mat:
I really like the way it looks in the frame. Now to find the perfect spot to hang it!
– Susan Brubaker Knapp
