Riot in the Cell Blocks
37.5" x 26.5", May 2024
Cotton fabrics, origami and craft papers, wood beads. Fusible web appliqué. Tied quilt at block corners and hand-embroidered with cotton floss.
Technical challenges:  The blocks are made of paper that was crazy-quilted onto 5" muslin squares using the stitch-and-flip method. Some paper edges had to be glued to keep them flat. Attached blocks to the quilt top with fusible web, then stitched along all edges with embroidery floss after discovering that this could not be done without hand-punching sewing holes through all the layers first. (Punching and stitching added many hours to the assembly time, which may explain why I have never seen this done anywhere else.) Traced the water and fireworks patterns with fabric marking pencils and embroidered. 
If I were ever to do this over, which will not happen, I would cut and arrange the blocks into more interesting shapes and make the piece about one-third to one-half of this size.