My goal is to have three new linen wholecloth quilts completed by June, one small wholecloth silk quilt done by the Road to California show in January, and oodles of new class samples ready for the classroom. Two of the three linen quilts are almost designed and I finished designing the small silk wholecloth today and it's finally ready for the machine. I thought it would be a great teaching opportunity to share the journey of the small wholecloth quilt.
I am always telling my students to take a design, revamp it and make it their own...that's what I do! I have lots of the Dover books with all kinds of designs and I was inspired by a design featured in a book with tile designs. I liked the design but it needed some help. I cut, pasted, threw away, recopied, redrew, etc. and finally came up with something that was pleasing to me.
I love to use my mirrors to duplicate designs and see how they will work as a wholecloth. Decision made...I LOVE it!
I retraced it into a four-block section and placed the paper on my light table. I have some beautiful butter yellow smooth Dupioni silk for this piece and placed it on top and have spent five evenings tracing this. Finally got it done this morning.
It still needed a border so I shrunk one of my stencil border designs, copied it lots, cut it apart, and fudged to fit...I taped it together and placed it underneath the yellow silk. I traced the feather spines only as I want to do free-form feathers.
Once all the marking was done I pin basted the whole piece.
Because this is a wholecloth quilt it needs to be straight basted to stabilize it and this was done with my walking foot using a large stitch and Superior Threads' Vanish Lite thread. This is a water soluble thread that washes out when the quilting is complete. I straight basted in all four directions. Once the straight basting is completed I can remove the pins if I wish.
I plan on using a beautiful sea foam green Kimono Silk for all of the main quilting designs as well as a matching yellow silk for the background textures. I also used a full thickness wool batting. I will take pictures of my journey as I go!
I will have some blog posts coming up sharing my three linen wholecloth pieces I'm working on...I'm very excited about these and can't wait to share.
Hugs, Cindy :)
9 comments:
This design is gorgeous! I love the complete look in the mirrors!
Did you use water soluble thread in both top and bottom when you basted? Beautiful design.
Beautiful design. Your marks look so dark and sharp on the silk fabric. What marking tool did you use?
Thank you for showing the process. Your quilts are always so inspiring!
Love watching you create!
I hear you have been flooded, I do hope you are OK.
WoW!!! What do you mark your design with? Beautiful work, you are such an inspiration!!!
Thank you for sharing your process, with photos too,now feel inclined to try a wholecloth SIMPLE design, thanks so much Cindy.
I'd also love to know what marking you used to get it so dark! I know the standard blue, but not the black! Thanks!
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