I have been fortunate enough to teach a few times in Italy in a little hilltop town called Orvieto. We stayed in a 14th century convent which has been converted into a B&B complete with nuns and a childcare centre. It is a lovely place to stay and teach. The entrance to this convent had this amazing wrought iron doorway and I always felt like I was entering a heavenly place when I went through it. This image has been crying out to be made into a quilt for years so the Portal prompt was perfect.

This is the original image which I manipulated along with another doorway in the town with interesting stone work which I also loved so I combined their features and then had it printed at full size

I painted a piece of fabric which I thought would be suitable for the background after I decided that the gateway would be to a perfect entrance to a heavenly place.

I pinned the paper to the background and stitched all the lines except the more intricate grids which I recreated with thermofax screens and printed. Picking out the paper always takes forever

Once these printed sections were dry I quilted them as well

I needed to create a solid stone wall and I had some refused hand painted fabrics which perfectly suited. You can be lucky sometimes. Once the walls were up, I free motion quilted them to create a random stone texture.

Once I decided to call it Knocking on Heaven’s Door I can’t stop humming it.

Knocking on Heaven’s Door

Hand painted and screen printed fabric

Free motion quilting

38″ x 40″