Friday, June 24, 2011

Excuse me while I gush

I LOVE this quilt!!!  I love that I got to try some new techniques while making it.  I love that it stretched my creativity and is my own unique design.  I love the way the quilting enhances the design.  I love that most of the fabrics came from my stash.  I love that it's soft and cuddly!  I just love it!!!

A friend of mine works for an adolescent psychiatric treatment center and we've discussed how some quilts could warm the place up a bit but never got around to specifics.  In my mind I wanted to make something soothing yet interesting.  Something that the more you looked at it the more you saw.  I call this Keeping It Together.  There is a mix of traditional nine patch blocks and crazy nine patch blocks.  Without revealing too much of my own insanity, I see it as the tidal pull between chaos and structure.  The fabrics are batiks I've picked up over the years mixed in with a few trips to my LQS.  I quilted it on the longarm with a wavy pattern called Happy Times and after I picked the thread I found out it's named appropriately enough, De Nile.  I love a good pun!

Then came my previously mentioned binding tizzy which I decided to view as an opportunity to stretch out of my perfect world comfort zone and do something creative.  I asked myself "What Would Rachel (my incredibly imaginative friend) Do?" and decided even though I actually still had fabric to make more matching binding I'd use something else.  Rachel pointed out that modern quilt goddess Alissa also had the same problem/solution so I'm not sure it was really as risk-taking as it felt but it definitely worked with my philosophy for this quilt. 

What I love most about this quilt is that it has reminded me that my quilts should capture MY vision!

1 comment:

  1. Love it! Can't wait to see it in person! The color palette is so soothing but it has so much motion - it's really great!

    Missed you yesterday - hope to see you soon!

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