Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Coffee Memories for Grace Johnson

 
When I painted the coffee cups in Judy Coates Perez’s acrylic ink class at International Quilt Festival 2015 in Houston I knew I would make an art quilt for my long-time coffee buddy, Grace Johnson’s birthday.


Judy had us make 10 different background samples in the morning. The background of the cups was sea sponge-painted with several colors of acrylic ink. When the sponge paint was dry, I cut coffee cup shapes out of freezer paper and ironed them onto the fabric as a resist. I dry-brushed blue ink off of the edges of the cups to create the blue background. I added the brown coffee with a second freezer paper stencil and some fabric markers.


I added borders of my own hand-dyed, and some commercial hand-dyed fabric.


I added rice stitches around the cups and an arch to represent morning with embroidery floss. 

I drew the spoon with silver Sharpie and Tsukineko white ink. I sewed clear beads spilling from the spoon to represent sugar.

When Grace announced that she would be moving to Tulsa to be near her family I realized we had been having coffee together for 19 years.

So I glued and stitched down 19 coffee beans.

 Coffee Memories, 12 x 24"

Grace, I look forward to visiting your new home in Tulsa!