Here's looking at you, kid

Today we unveil our Animal Kingdom quilts on the Art Quilts Around the World blog. This is mine, hanging in my sewing room. I would like to show you how it came about.

I wanted to use my new large screen for this quilt and thought of an interesting animal shape to screen print. Of course - a zebra! I found this copyright-free image on the internet:



I cropped it and printed it in A3 size using Posterazor. I traced the lines on freezer paper and cut out the white shapes - about an hour of work!



I ironed the freezer paper stencil to my screen and got everything ready to print:



Then I took a deep breath, pulled the squeegee down a few times, carefully took the screen off the fabric and voilà!



Oh, the moment when you uncover a great print! :-)



I made a few more prints and then had to clean the screen - and that was the end of my beautiful stencil...

I chose the best of the prints, sandwiched it and quilted it with a black Aurifil thread along the lines, letting them continue in the border (using the original photo as an example). I used a facing finish for the edges of a quilt and attached a sleeve rightaway. Usually it takes me a while to get to that, but I really wanted to put this quilt up the wall!



I think this is my best screen printed image ever and am very proud of it! I uploaded it to Spoonflower where it is now for sale in a few different colourways (a regular black-and-white one and two pop-art zebras!).

The quilt measures 60 x 43 cm (23.5 x 17 inch). There was no size requirement for the challenge and I wanted the quilt to be large enough to enter it in my guild's quilt show in October. Afterwards it may go to my husband's office for he absolutely loves it! :-)



PS The title popped into my head while I was quilting this piece and I thought it fitted the bill...