Bathroom Wall Hangings

Bathroom art is almost it’s own genre. What do you like to see on the walls of a bathroom? You can’t go wrong with anything water related…fish, water, lakes, oceans…all fit in with the aqueous theme. Birds and flowers are always good. Blues and aquas are always welcome. Of course, I prefer to make it myself.

This piece was my first dedicated bathroom wall hanging. We visited Maine on a long cross country trip and I wanted to recreate the Cape Neddick light house that we visited. I looked for a kit, and then gave up and used a photograph, enlarging the photo onto graph paper and then cut raw edge applique. This was one of very early applique pieces and was also made on my 1964 vintage Bernina. It is now in our upstairs bath.

We are in a new home and I have bathrooms to decorate; I was ready for some new bathroom art! I hung my Blue Lily Rose after painting the downstairs bath with a sea foam color (really difficult to photograph) and ordered some very inexpensive, lacy curtains with a bird motif to reflect the Lily Rose bird. But I had another wall left to decorate.

Rummaging through my stash, I found some rectangular bird panels featuring hummingbirds in a water color style and colors that could work with Blue Lily Rose, while bringing some warm gold, peach and pink tones into the room. More rummaging and I found some black lacy trim to use as a frame for the panels.

I want to add depth and texture, so a border was added using some small metallic grunge dot fabric I picked up at a sewing expo several years back. The black lace trim was added. At this point, I began to get a bit bored…

6 oz bamboo batting was sandwiched and I started thinking about what to FMQ in the small spaces I had to quilt (the whole piece is 30″ x 17.5″) to perk the quilt and myself up. But first, and always first, I used MonoPoly for SID and outlining of the birds and flowers.

I have always loved that romantic, small feather quilting and decided to try some small scale feathers. As I rummaged for a matte, lightweight white thread, my hand landed on a high gloss variegated pastel, 40wt and I thought, “Why not?” I started with some swirls and then made a simple curved line with a swirl on top and traveled back down. This became my feather spine.

Tiny feathers are a good exercise in controlled quilting! I had to slow down and concentrate on finger movement rather than arm and shoulder movement. I continued making curved lines and filling with feathers.

Try something new this week and have fun!

Lennea