Evening Star

February 2002, 31" wide by 39" high, Private Collection, © 2002, Maria Elkins, All Rights Reserved.

This quilt was created for a show with the theme of "Night Sky." The yearly show is sponsored by the Miami Valley Art Quilt Network and is held at the Aullwood Audubon Center and Farm in Dayton, Ohio.

As soon as I heard the theme of the show I immediately thought of my oldest daughter. She had really enjoyed her astronomy class and she still loves to look up into the night sky to find the constellations she learned about so I decided to use that idea. This quilt shows my oldest daughter pointing out a constellation to her sister. The title "Evening Star" was picked because that is the name of the quilt block used in the quilt that wraps around them.

The girls’ hair and the sweater were created using Tsukineko colored inks on tone-on-tone, commercially printed fabrics. The hair was quilted with rayon and metallic threads. The quilt that is wrapped around them is created with multiple fabrics fused onto a single piece of fabric (the one that looks like it is the sashing between the blocks). Then I hand painted over the top of this "quilt" with Setacolor fabric paint to create the shadows. The sky is quilted using black metallic thread and I used tiny little rhinestones to create sparkling stars.