13 July 2008

Using precious silks

In this silk quilt, the wide dupion strips are stamped with Chinese characters - flower, beauty, spirit, words like that from a set of commercial stamps, emulating the four-character idioms so common in Chinese. Narrower strips are cut from my extensive collection of dupion, and the "pictures" are precious bits of vintage silks, most passed on to me by Sally (thank you!).

I used a combination of strip piecing and foundation piecing - chunks of curtain interlining did double duty as foundation and wadding. Here it is, taking shape on my design floor:This is a view of the inside. The base fabric is cut into smaller bits to use as foundation for each section, then these are sewn together and the seams held open by simple, invisible-on-the-outside stitching. And sometimes when the silk seemed to be fraying a bit much, I added zigzag "just in case" -
The "chunks" allow the vertical strips to be sewn in easily.

The backing is on, and it's pinned on the wall beside the computer, catching the odd glance as I decide what sort of quilting it will get -
Hmm, one side seems to be longer than the other! The colours are mujch more vivid than in these photos - perhaps too vivid?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

so, so beautiful :) and i love the shape - at first glance i thought it was going to be a large quilt and i thought eek too much, but it's just perfect as it is. no such thing as too vivid :) or if so i'd be happy to provide an appreciative adoptive home ;)