Jingle Bells
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Quilt Summary:
"Jingle Bells" reflects Kathy's memories of a family Christmas sleigh rides.
Category:
Featured Quilts
Style:
Pictorial Quilts
Owned By:
-
Name of Maker:
Kathy McNeil
Name of Quilter:
Kathy McNeil
Year Made:
2014
Awards:
Director´s Choice award at Road to California 2014 and Most Humorous
Design Source:
Original Design
Techniques:
- Applique
- Embellishments
- - Decorative Stitches
- - Thread Painting
- Materials
- - Unusual Materials
- Patchwork
- - Piecing
- Quilting
- - Free Motion Quilting
Show or Museums:
Road to California
Description:
Kathy really wanted the snow in Jingle Bells to look like a watercolor painting done with fabric.
Artist Statement by Kathy McNeil from Superior Threads:
Jingle Bells took about 800 hours to make. My goal was to have the snow look like a watercolor painting of snow. A huge percentage of this quilt would be white and I did not want it to clump together in one big white blob. A variety of white prints were used and I over-dyed many of them with my transparent paint crayons. The crayons are a high end art medium for use on canvas and they work wonderfully on fabric, too. Most of the shading was achieved using these crayons on commercially printed fabrics.
The sky is a hand painted piece, by me, to reflect the lavenders that I used in the snow. Texture was created on the horses with embroidered eye lashes. I used a machine to add thread embellishments in the tack for the horses bridles. The jingle bells are made with gold lame cut out over black. Each one is trapuntoed with extra batting for dimension. The viewer can find all kinds of sparkle in the snow created with hand sewn sequins, hot fix crystals and a commercial bridal fabric that had sequins attached to a mesh like overlay. Gold metallic thread was used to create the lettering across the bottom (not shown in this photo) and then real jingle bells were attached. These special touches really help my quilt come to life.
Jingle Bells won four international Viewer’s Choice awards and is one of my personal favorites, too. It is currently proudly on display at Superior Threads' headquarters in St. George, Utah.