You might find the next few weeks as boring as watching paint dry or you might regard it as watching a great (I hope) quilt come into being.
The lily was just to get your attention. I've waited three years for this to come into bloom, so even with it's specks of whatever on it, I'm delighted.
Sinclair insisted on joining me this morning and when I asked him to move he just turned his back on me.
Though this does show his beautiful spots.
Last night I started making the grid and three quarters of the way round it was fine but as I feared
by the time I hit the last quarter this morning there was a bit of creative measuring required. A mixture of dividing the numbers a bit further and judging by eye.
I have spent a very long time on the design of this quilt. I studied long and hard looking at many old north country quilts for their feathers. There were some I love and some I didn't. I taught myself to draw feathers (see my very first post in my old blog). I filled sketchbooks with feathers. Long skinny ones, short and fat, curly whirly.
Then I worked on the format of the design. I knew I could do something fancier with the format than Elizabeth Sanderson ( a north country quilt stamper) could do with the tools available to her. I used a beam compass which works with a radius up to 15" and another which you slide onto a yard stick but because I didn't want a pencil line I had to tie my pen on one end and yet another ordinary compass. I bisected angles. I did things I haven't done since school.
A few years ago I found some lovely wide paper in an art shop in Brighton. It's about 50-60" wide which is great, it's very good quality paper which isn't so great as it seems determined to roll itself back into a roll. I taped it down on the table and started to design. The most used tools were, pencil, my eraser, my scanner and the photocopy shop. I kept designing feathers and auditioning them. I kept drawing sweeping lines and rotating them to give different shapes to insert feathers.
Marking the quilt has been a journey in itself. The fabric is cotton sateen. I pre-shrunk it and starched it within an inch of it's life. The more the fabric is handled the more stretchy it gets. This doesn't help.
Anyway it's all marked up now. Hopefully tomorrow it shall be pinned for sewing the trapunto areas. Thursday we're out, Friday for the stitching with the water soluble thread and the weekend cutting the excess batting away.
I hope.
Watch this space.
I also tried adding dome circles (just roughly to get an impression) and some small freehand feathers. These train tracks are about an inch apart.
I think the echo meandering looks the best so I'll go with that.
I also tried the curves on the grid going width ways. Nah, doesn't look as good. I am pleased with how it looks with the alternate diamonds with trapunto behind them.
