New Quilt Pix "Spring Lake"

kratersge wrote:

Ok Susan -- this has been a journey of honour and stress LOL In October my guild committee invited me to make a quilt to be raffled at the Gold Coast Craft & Quilt exhibition in April. Some thousands of people attend. The request used the words 'you do interesting work that's different...'. Uh ha... they didn't want a traditional block quilt. The subject matter was to be The Seasons - all or one thereof. I spent 4 weeks playing with designs and agonising over it, looking at books etc. I then decided it would have a pieced background and thought of japanese cherry blossoms sprays. I worked out the diamond pieced background in EQ5 which gave me a template without regard to worrying about angles and degrees. The diamond has 4 parts so I strip pieced random fabrics in the indigo range and the light blue range. Then onto the design wall for placement. At this point the background was squared with the light blue continuing down to the bottom r.h. corner. I then turned my mind to the cherry blossoms and found a template in a Japanese book "The Changing Seasons". I used freezer paper underneath and basted under the edges of 40+ flowers. I appliqued the branches on to the background and appliqued the flowers on. I cut the background from the back and removed the papers. I didn't want the dark fabrics to show through the pale flower fabric. My girlfriend kindly embroidered the stamens (doesnt show up in the pix) as embroidery is not one of my strong suites. Nor's applique really LOL I worked out where the sashiko quilting would be positioned after I angled the background in the bottom r.h.s. and thought about the wide border. This project was made more difficult and stressful because I didn't have the final layout firmly set out. So at each design point I sat and thought, sat and thought, stressed, sat and thought. By the time I had it ready to sandwich with the sashiko markings chalked, I hated it. I didn't have the inclination or time (for a raffle quilt) to totally handquilt it, so it became clear I couldn't do japanese quilting patterns by machine around the flowers - stopping and starting would be just too hard, so I had to do random machine quilting - some stippling and some curvy swirls. On the plain navy background and border parts there is parallel lines in red with a few blossom outlines ( shows up in the detail pix). Until I pressed, bound and pressed again, I wasn't happy. Then I thought it looked OK and you girls seem to like it, so I hope it is successful being raffled. I handed it over yesterday and the organiser liked it. Oh, the guild will be paying for materials ($140). It's not actually a charity raffle - the guild profit from it, so there is some thought that in future years the maker should be given a proportion of ticket sales which I think is a good idea. Meanwhile that won't happen for me, but I'm not going to worry over that. I'm kinda glad I'll be away on vacation when the Show is on LOL.

Cheers

-- Bronnie

I enjoyed reading this. Thanks Bronnie. I'm always in awe of you who can design on your own. KJ

Lovely! Wish I had bought a ticket, Bronnie, that is a beautiful quilt!

Absolutely gorgeous!

Wow!

It's been a while since I've looked at your album--and I'd forgotten how fabulous your work is!

--Heidi

Plattsburgh (UPstate) NY

Br> Finally finished this quilt for a raffle at a local Art & Craft Show