As the repetitive theme in the series I decided to follow my ceramic quilting inspiration and use my favourite pottery shape – the small lacrymal vase found in Carthage. I like using pottery images in quilting and I have used them many times, but incorporating them into  a modern composition will be a challenge in itself.

I have some black and white commercial fabrics, but they are somewhere in a box … so I decided to print the hand printed fabric I needed.

I used stencils and acrylic paint, black on white and white on black.

Firstly I did a frottage on the black background to “break” the solid black. For that I used a grid underneath the fabric and white acrylic paint.

I cut my printed fabrics into 1.5 squares et fused them on the background going from the darkest to the lightest.

I drew a shadow shape around each square and started filling the shadow shapes with hand-embroidered stitches, sometimes echoing the stitches  with the print (French knots for dots) sometimes not, using perlé thread N°8. The pottery was appliqued at the end, by machine with a satin stitch.

The shape was cut out from a piece of transparent curtain, the squares can be seen through. The checkered background could be a rug or a tile wall.

The quilt is finished with a facing.

Black and white, frottage, stencilling, hand stitching, embroidery, cotton fabric, acrylic paint, ceramic quilting inspiration, pottery images in quilts, hand printed fabrics, fused fabric art, checkered background.