New Year - New Site

I feel like its been ages since I was able to "put anything OUT there". I hadn't realized what a cathartic affect writing things down had and how it helped me to clarify direction and process. I fear my old blog is going to go silently into the netherworld and never be resurrected. (Even old IT guys drift into the ether of their own minds and never return.)
I was astonished, after my Wordpress account died, by the number of emails I received or inquires I received form members of other boards. A lot of people are lurkers and have no idea how much a comment or acknowledgement brightens our day. SO if that applies to you, drop me a comment and do the same for other blogs you follow.

 

So let me start the year 2014 with the belated wedding quilt I made for my stepdaughter and her (drop-dead gorgeous Germanic hunk) husband Olaf.

 

I think Arwynn had been reticent to accept or give me the okay to make her a quilt as a gift. Whether she thought she'd be stuck with something hokey or worse. As a graphic artist in her own right, the design was important to her and I appreciate that she insisted they be in on the design from the beginning. I finally got approval almost a year after her wedding for the design above, a take on a Mondrian painting. (We were able to see a number of his originals in Basel Switz. and were surprised at the "slap dash" nature of the canvases). Arwynn had selected her colour scheme, similar to her wedding colours or Lime green and Teal. And batiks were a non brainer. A few hand dyed ( no not by me "dye-version") fat quarters thrown in and two batches of jelly rolls and we were away to the design table.

 

 

 I knew I had enough fabrics but the trick was ti use them effectively. Some pieces were larger than others so I had to make a few compromises to get pieces large enough. That was one of the reasons I opted to make a couple of patchwork pieces. They gave some relief from the sold blocks, added little shots of subtle colour and added some action and life to the design.

 

 Though the actual quilt went together quite easily, if I discount a few false starts on inset pieces and y-corners, the challenge for me was to minimize the seams in the background fabric. I actually ordered two complete batches of background fabric. After the first arrived, I decide it was too busy for the front and consequently I used it as the backing.
But how to quilt this cost me a few nights sleep. I finally went back to Costa Rica, where the wedding had been. Referencing the colours I decided to reference the flora and fauna for the design. Totally extraneous from the quilt design, I layered it over the severe graphic.

My quilting frame gives me only an effective design area 18 inches high. All the motifs were much larger. I considered drawing them on the front but I live in fear of the marks never coming out. My solution was to "stitch" the major parts of the foliage using a needle and thread in a running stitch in  contrasting colour. This allowed me to move the quilt back and forth on the frame (after machine basting the WHOLE thing first) and follow my thread lines.

 

 

The results were really very good and I know I will use that method again. I have been unwilling to make such large designs on my quilts as well as customer quilts because I knew I would lose my frame of reference.

So Arwynn and Olaf finally have their wedding quilt, a year late. But I think she was very pleased and the dog will sleep on the floor.