Fabric Collage-ing

'Fabric Collage' = my version of quilting. Yeah, I gotta be different. MACAns were tasked with a quilting project a few months ago. This is a Quilting for Social Justice project, brought to us by Dr. Joan M. E. Gaither. She was lovely and smart, and made beautiful art, but I have to say, quilting is not my bag! And these have got to be the largest quilting pieces ever made. They're like, 5 foot by 3 foot or something as ridiculously large (we MACAns dream big).

Needless to say, this was a struggle for me aesthetically. How to make this quilt something that I would make (hint: I would never make a quilt). So the challenge for me was not so much the social justice aspect, or the message, but instead the actual medium. So my solution was that I glued everything. I used no-sew glue and treated it like a giant collage...with fabric. I may add a little paint later, I have been thinking about it.

Anyway, I'm just about finished. I still have to add the words, and I have to rethink the words I picked out two months ago, but the rest of it is finished. We had decided that our overall theme would be "cages". In fact, the quilt will have a (giant) armature and thus become an actual (giant) cage. Each of the six of us got to create one "view", or social commentary into the cage. We will each have a bar down the middle of our pieces as well, to simulate the caged-in feeling. I will have more details on all of this later, and I'm sure, many more photos. I just wanted to give you some in-progress shots...mine is a bird, and it will be about workers rights. I have been particularly affected by everything going on in Wisconsin right now (and the rest of the country, for that matter).