"Archeology quilt challenge"

Enough of procrastinating... this will be my first post on my new blog. Welcome to all of you who will take sometime to read my scribblings.

A while ago, my art quilt group, "Quilts on the Wall", organised a challenge on an "Archeology" theme quilt. A lot of options came to my mind, but as I was digging into my small amount of fabric ... I re-discovered my husband's old vest he was wearing in the 80's... (no comment !) I had cut out the front of it as I liked the shiny blue fabric with Egyptian designs, guessing that one day, I will just need it.

Well, that day has come and it was the beginning of my journey into the past ...

I decided this vest needed a "head", so here I went and spent 2 hours at my local library to find books about Egypt, trying to find the right guy who would end up replacing my husband's face and chest... This was not an easy task, he is so handsome ... at least for me ... but I must say I discovered on the back of a page, the beautiful face of SETI I, son of RAMSES I and I knew he would be the one ! You will notice he has half of his brain left, but we are not asking him to talk...

Anyway, I then decided I would use a deconstructed screen printed fabric I had painted last year in a workshop with Kerr Grabowski, that looked appropriate to the theme, and following the advice of my "hubby" (always... well, almost always...) I sewed some ceramic Egyptian scarab beads on the vest, in place of the original buttons. I ordered them on line and they all look a bit different.

I used T-shirt transfer paper to applique the face on the background and used the same technique to applique the big scarab at the bottom of the quilt. I then used gold beads to sew around the scarab.

Did you know that the ancient Egyptians gave a lot of power to the sacred scarab, symbol of life, hope and regeneration ?

On each side of the vest, I appliqued some "gauze" fabric, that reminded me of the strips around the mummy ...

I finished this piece by quilting with metallic gold thread on the vest and off white and invisible thread on the sides.

This quilt will tour for 2 years in different places with my art quilt group and it was really an "out of the box" project for me, but I really enjoyed the process !