Monday 6 April 2015

Breaking the Rules of Quilting

My mother always says to me; "There is no such thing as the Quilt Police!" and by this she means that there a lot of "rules" in quilting that aren't really true at all. Below, I made a weird piece with a load of new exciting fabrics I had bought at a show, trying to break as many rules as I could just for the illicit thrill. 


I decided to create a piece that showed a beach with a seaside town. I had written a few sentences describing an imaginary town, all the smells and sounds that you can't really experience with fabric. I was not about to wash my gorgeous new silks in salt water but I suppose a more dedicated artist would have done!


The first and most important rule I broke was how to finish a quilt; I have left the edges raw cut, but had fun with the blue silk "sea" by gathering it into a blue bead and stitching it closed. I really liked the way this looked afterwards, almost like a wave, but it was a complete accident so I can't take credit for it.


I tried playing around with some free motion quilting for the sand, where the waves had washed up and down leaving marks. I messed up a little because  I meant to have the darker sand down by the sea and the lighter yellow fabric by the town, because that would be more realistic, but I sewed the pieces together in the wrong order.


Between the layers of light yellow and dark yellow I trapped some fine gold mesh fabric, before tying a bunch of lovely auburn threads together at both ends and sewing them in place. This was just an experiment really, to try and get some movement of the sand. I wrote in pen (gasp) on the town buildings the description I had written before I started the piece, rather than draw windows and doors etc. All in all, not a bad little foray into rule breaking.

Go ahead, give it a go, ignore everything you've been taught and just be free with gorgeous fabrics!

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