"Soft treasures"

This quilt did not make its way into the world easily, so with a late-but-big Tah Dah, I give you "Soft treasures" (Jan 2014, 65*77cm)

With all the fabrics and notions available to us quilters, it is easy to lose track of the simple joy of creating your own images, so I wanted to go in the other direction using only solid black fabric and colourful thread, and techniques from my free motion quilting class, Quilta Figurer.

The quilt is free motion quilted in various patterns and hand embroidered. Extra texture and depth have been added by playing with the thread tension and adding just a few lines with fabric crayons.

Those of you who read this blog, know that it took more than a few experiments to get the colours

and techniques

and stitches right.

Those of you who do free motion quilting, know that it takes more than a few hours to do such dense quilting.

Those of you who do hand stitching, know that it takes more than a few days to do this much hand stitching.

It did indeed take quite a lot of work to finish the quilt, but the competition for which it was made got cancelled, and after a lot of mishaps on the way to an exhibition, it was finally showed at a “Show & tell”, for half a minute, in a very poorly lit hall, 100 feet away, all crinkled and horrible. Tah dah. I felt crinkled and horrible too.

Hopefully I’ll feel better about the quilt when it gets unpacked in the new house. Maybe I’ll want to take properly lit pictures. At least I can use it as a sample in future Quilta Figurer classes.

I'll keep you updated..

"His wedding, and hers"

Flipping through the folders on my computer in which pictures from different devices have been uploaded since moving became The Main Verb around here, I decided to give up on getting the pictures and stories and whatnots in chronologic order and just go for it.

“His wedding and hers” (January 2014) was made for the annual Norwegian Quilt Association competition. The theme was Lady and the tramp (contrasts between feminine/masculine, smooth/rough etc), and was to be interpreted any way we wanted to.



(Sorry, my only head on picture was taken indoors)

When reading the theme, I immediately thought about weddings and how the bride’s and groom’s perspectives often seem very different. While the groom may show rather reluctantly up in any old suit, the bride often has planned her wedding since early childhood. Disclaimer: this is based more on life portrayed in TV, movies and books than real life experiences, but still, I find it rather baffling.

Anyway, I envisioned a rooster popping in at a chicken run, just looking for a bit of fun, and getting caught in the wedding frenzy of the yearning bride-to-be,

 

 

 

her mother,

 

 

sister,

 

 

 

future maid of honor.

 

 

 

Can you tell how he feels by the look in his eyes?

 

The panels are made of recycled painted tablecloths, curtains, a bridal shawl, hessian, and felted wool. They have been free motion quilted, couched onto a brushed polyester backing, and then embellished by hand and machine.

 

 

There are quite a few happy go lucky new techniques in here which, all in all, worked out pretty well. You never know until you try, do you.

You can see previous posts here and here.

I had so much fun making this quilt, and it drew quite a few smiles and comments hanging at the NQF exhibition back in March.

Thanks for stopping by!