A Treasure Map

"Searching for Serenity" is the treasure map art quilt that resulted from a funny bit of dupioni silk that my friend Heather gave me a few years back after she had done some dyeing.  It was actually her wipe up cloth, and the colours and shapes in it called to me to do some hand stitching.  If you'd like to know more about it's progress, you can read about it here (original post showing the dye stained silk), here (showing the extensive hand stitching), and here (where I posted about adding the machine stitching).  

As I completed the the machine stitching, the hand stitched areas seemed to rise from the surface and I watched as a treasure map emerged.  Jean noticed this too, and even commented on it in a previous post!  Free motion pebbling was used to add additional depth and texture, allowing the islands to rise from the sea, and the sea to flow out into the border of the quilt before changing to a linear echo of the flowing water.  I did free motion machine embroidery on water soluble stabilizer to create the pirate ship and the compass rose.  The island names are small metallic pieces with words engraved into them, including the word Serentity...the ultimate destination.