Quilts and Other Stuff from Frances

CONTRAST, CONTRAST, CONTRAST

Tuesday night was the reveal party for our guild challenge. The rules were that the quilt had to be 24 inches and had to include at least 2 forms of contrast.

When I first started thinking about this project, I asked my husband (who is a scientist) if he could think of contrasts that occur in science. He thought for a minute and said “The only one that I can think of is “Waves” and “Particles”. My answer was “dont think any further…that one is perfect.”

When I got ready to work on it, I was SO excited to find the blue and yellow tie-die print fabric on my shelf. I have NO idea where it came from, but I immediately knew that it was going to be the basis for the piece. I photocopied a section of the fabric and cut it into squares so that I could play with how to put it together to make the wavy pattern. I then cut the fabric squares and sewed them together.

As I was trying to plan the borders, I saw the Caryl Bryer Fallert gradation fabrics that were left over from the “Peacock” quilt and thought they would look nice in the piece. I also realized that the dark and light could be another of my contrasts. Once I decided to put the center square on a wonky point, I ended up losing a lot of the contrast because I cut off the darkest and lightest parts!!

The final step was quilting the piece. I wanted to do some trapunto work on it, but didn’t have a lot of time to spend, so I tried a technique that I have read about on some of the blogs that I follow. You use two different battings….the bottom one is a wool batt and the top one is a polyester. Supposedly, as you stitch LOTS in the non-trapunto areas, the wool gives it a good base and the polyester puffs up. I may not have done enough stitching to get that full effect, but at least it did give a bit of puffiness to the top.

The double decker “sandwich” was wonderful to quilt on, but I found it really hard to make the edges stay flat. I may take the facing strips off and add a few more quilting lines to the final border and see if I can flatten it out some more.

On a fun note, my quilt was selected as the favorite in the guild, and I won a prize consisting of fabric and other fun goodies.

As is always the case, I truly enjoyed the process of making a quilt to conform to a set of parameters. I find it to be a freeing thing!!! I have also learned that in these situations, I seem to work better when I wait till the last minute. The BEST challenge pieces that I have made have been done in the day or two before it was due!!

On a work note, I am working hard to get all of my ducks in a row before income tax season gets started…..so far so good!!!

Bye for now……..

3 thoughts on “CONTRAST, CONTRAST, CONTRAST

  1. That's fabulous! I love the contrast in the two fabrics, and that wavey tie die is absolutely stunning.Thanks for the double batting tip. That's something I'd like to try. My husband is a scientist too; maybe I should pick his brain for ideas sometimes…

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