As is usual for me, I thought about this quilt for quite a while before actually doing anything. I researched hippie buses, books, histories and various images online. I decided to make a turned edge landscape of impossible fabrics, including several pieces of what I call my ugliest fabric, the brown, white and black yardage I never had the heart to throw away. What a coup if I could use THAT fabric!! I decided on white fabric for the sky, which I added some blue fabric paint to on the left side to give it some sky color.
In the meantime, I found a bus image online that I could use for my bus shape. I played around with it in Photoshop Elements for a bit to get a sharply defined black and white image.
After printing out the image, I used my lightbox and a sharpie marker to trace the general shape, simplifying it further. I thought about putting people in the windows, then discarded the idea because 1. it would be a distraction, and 2. I'd never get this quilt done if I started designing hippie faces! With printout in hand, I got my pencil and eraser and let my imagination out of the cage, drawing in the decorations I wanted on my bus. I then took a picture of it with my digital camera and printed out an enlarged version to use as my blueprint.
I like to put my life sized blueprint under the paper from paper backed fusible web, and then I can assemble the object right on the ironing board because the paper is nearly see through and the fusible fabric won't stick to it permanently. That's how I put the bus together, using fabric paint markers to color and shade after it was assembled, but not yet fused to the background. When the Background was complete and hanging on my design wall, I was able to put the bus in various positions to find my favorite, and then, right on the design wall I could use an iron to lightly press the bus and make it stick until I did a better pressing.
I then pulled out my modest collection of already fused fabrics, and a few ziplocs of mod flowers I'd cut out before for a different project, and began cutting out lots and lots more flowers of many sizes, in many colors. I laid the quilt on the dining room table, which is fortunately NOT anything special or fancy, with a folded bed sheet under it, and lightly fused flowers all over where I thought the exhaust of the bus would go. Once I was sure about the placement, I pressed them more securely and then spent uncounted time stitching/embroidering with black top thread around every fused piece of fabric including the bus. I used the black thread because I DIDN'T want it to be invisible - I wanted the whole thing to look kind of like a pencil sketch that was colored in.
I printed, on fabric, several of the sayings and phrases from the sixties, and used them with off black for the outside border, to kind of contain the riot. At this point, I was at a standstill, not quite finished, but not really knowing how to finish. I left it on the design wall to ponder while I made the Big Love quilt, also entered into the TQS challenge. What could I put in the left side of the sky????? Should I do extra fancy quilting? Should I do as several have suggested and incorporate music notes, or lyrics in the sky? hhmmm.....
I finished the Big Love quilt a week before the TQS challenge deadline, which gave me just enough time to finish the hippie bus quilt. I auditioned various musical elements in my head and couldn't make anything work to my satisfaction, and then I thought about the connection between flowers and butterflies. Butterflies represent rebirth, you know, from caterpillar to butterfly, and these 1st few months of 2010 have been something of a rebirth for me as far as being an artist goes, so it just felt 'right' to use butterflies. They are also fused, and outlined in black thread, as you can see from this picture of the back:
It was time to baste the quilt layers and get to quilting! Rather than find a single fabric for the backing, I chose to use some star blocks I had purchased on ebay, and assembled into a quilt 'top' a while back. It became the back of a quilt instead. I chose white batting, lo loft. I basted the quilt with spray baste rather than stitches or pins. I've become more and more fond of spray basting, and have had no problems with it. I used variegate green in part of the landscape, and variegated purple in another part. The entire sky and bus were quilted in either small or large loop d loops with a gorgeous, bright orange rayon thread. Spent a little while squaring it up, made a binding out of a black on black fabric, and voila!
