34. Mosaic

Although "Mosaic" isn't a traditional crazy quilt, it may well be the nuttiest I've ever made. Pictures of the mosaic artwork in Ravenna, Italy, had captured my imagination--all those wonderful little bits of color!--and I tried to turn cloth into stone. Here's its story.

The beginning: Great enthusiasm and energy for a fun design--couldn't wait to see what it would look like.

The middle: Whoops--ran out of steam early as I cut out half-inch squares of fabric and batting and set them in place on a gray background with fabric glue, having no real sewing plan in mind.

The end: Resurrected the piece after several years, having re-discovered it in moving my studio from the old house to the new. Thinking it would be perfect to hang on the wall of our newly-tiled master bath, I doggedly sewed each piece down with free-motion zig-zag stitch and made my peace with the fraying threads that popped out from the raw edges between the zigs and the zags. Having gone through all the trouble (in retrospect, absolutely unnecessary) to put a small piece of batting under each square to make sure the finished product would have the right texture, I didn't want to flatten it out by quilting over everything once the quilt was layered. The only option remaining was to quilt the gray fabric "grout", of which there is a surprisingly large amount. I did, and lived to tell the tale.

The moral of the story:
The fact that I really enjoy the finished product a whole lot more than I did the process speaks volumes about why mosaics are made with stone tiles and not fabric. There's information here for me about knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your own medium, and I'm sure I'll figure it out as soon as I stop thinking about mosaics made from felted wool squares (no frayed edges to worry about) in smaller sizes--pillows perhaps?