Moth quilt

"Moths on the Screen" is what I've called this from the first idea. I wanted to give the sense one gets sometimes of a summer evening when it seems a flock of moths are trying to come in to the lighted interior. There are 15 moths [one is repeated]. They now hang in the living room above my spinet piano. They've come inside and found their alcove. This includes several new to me quilting techniques
The squares that make up the background were placed on gridded [2 inch square] fusable backing and then sewn. I like this backing very much since I'd never manage to get my squares so regular if sewing in rows or segments. I used a full 42x42 inch section of the gridded interfacing. When sewn it's much closer to 36x36, because the seams, of course, made the squares 1-1/2 inch. Obviously, I have used many different dark fabrics, blacks, browns, blues, greens, purples. The gray with gold border is a piece of West African fabric I purchased some years ago.
I wanted the moths to be three dimensional. They are but that is not obvious in the photos. I fused the fabric on which I had traced the moths to heavy weight interfacing, then backed it with a medium weight polyester batting and a black backing. I sewed the wing lines and other lines from the pattern defining the bodies and wing folds and gained dimension from the batting. Then I drew, colored and even finger painted [with stamp pad ink] for the designs. The designs were only suggested in the pattern I had so I looked most of the moths up in the Internet and colored them with some approximation of their actual coloring. The large moths were cut out of various off white and beige color-on-color fabrics. I dyed a couple of them lighter ones with coffee. The smaller moths are cut out of more colorful batiks. If I were doing it again, I think I would use more batiks. When I attached them to the background I sewed only along one of the inside, upper wing lines. They are stiff enough to stand away from the background a bit.

I don't repeat myself so I won't do it again but I may make a bright one with butterflies and a color-wash of floral patterns for the background ... "may" being the important word. I have other projects started already and a couple UFOs need to be finished. So another insect-y quilt won't be in the works anytime soon.