Subtle Differences

I've been so busy with customer quilts this year that it's been difficult to find the time to quilt for myself. Having entered a quilt in Festival of Quilts for the past few years I found it difficult to let it go. I had been  hankering with an idea to make a wholecloth quilt inspired by this wallpaper in my mothers bathroom, it's painted blown vinyl/anaglipta type paper.  Once I started to draw up designs I realised that I could also piece the design too.

I started to play with fabrics and drew up my design.

I decided to use silks and fell for the pale aqua green blue as at the moment my Mother has this bathroom painted in this colour. These silk fabrics are hand loomed Silk Dupion and therefore quite slubby so I used it as a directional fabric like a stripe to be sure the tones of the silk are consistant throughout the quilt in different lights.

I used quite a few different threads including Superior Bottomline, Metro, Metallic and Superior Kimono Silk, a couple of straight edge rullers and cut my own templates as a rough guide for my Acanthus leaves, then I stylised the leaves when I quilted them. This quilt is longarm quilted, all handguided with some ruler work. Size is 48"x55", I used Simply Cotton wadding with a layer of wool on top.

I didn't really use any blue pen on this quilt, instead I used purple air erasable makers but only where necessary, that had mostly disappeared by the time it was all bound and trimmed. I was soaking and blocking the quilt essentially to flatten it and pull back into shape after my piping and binding treament.

When soaking a quilt for blocking it's always such a relief when your water is clear with no signs of any loose dye, it would be tragic to get to this stage and ruin a quilt with colour runs.

Blocking on foamcore boards to pull back into shape, trying to keep everything straight and square.

Still wet

Still wet....

These colours are more true

I always intended this quilt to be shown from both sides. I'm very pleased with my thread choices on the silk back this is a smooth silk, it's a lovely effect. The back is more subdued than the front, just what I was looking for.  As a double sided quilt needs to look good from both sides this quilt has an integrated hanging system with quilted hanging loops to match each side of the quilt.  I used two different piping techniques on the front, a beaded piping insert as a stop border and a corded piping in the binding, on the back I used a beaded piping at the binding, so the binding is actually piped on both sides....not something I care to do again too soon, it's fiddly especially with silk.

So here it is I name it Subtle Differences

It's not a huge quilt, fits on the back seat of my car and yes, it was finished in time to ship to Festival of Quilts, in Birmingham, it has arrived and I have confirmation it's already been unpacked.