Friday 5 November 2010

EB DQS4 - What I sent

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This is the doll-quilt that I sent Anna for the EBDQS#4. I have named it Matilda's garden, as it to be used as a wall-hanging for her daughter's bedroom. I have used some of my Laura Gunn fabric (Vases from the Lantern Bloom collection) for the tree. The leaves are from the same fabric as the binding, which I found at Spotlight.

The free motion quilting is based on a spiral technique that I learned at a workshop with Kellie Wulfsohn. I was busy spiraling away between the branches with the intention to keep going, when I saw that I had given the tree a bit of a ghost effect. I kind of liked the way it looked and stopped where I was. I took it out to mum's and dad's and they liked the way that it looked too. I also got another opinion from AJ, who agreed that it was a good place to stop. Sometimes creativity is knowing when to stop!

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The pink bird at the centre of the tree represents Matilda. I have used a seed bead for her eye. The branches form a heart shape around her.

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The butterfly represents Anna (my swap partner, and Matilda's mum). I have also used seed beads here to embellish the antennae.

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The dragonfly represents Matilda's father. I used some Pellon Rainbowspun for the wings. The Rainbowspun was in the Vilene showbag that I purchased at the Stitches and Craft Show back in May.

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This bird represents Tom, Matilda's older brother.

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This bird represents Matilda's baby brother, Nate.

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I am pretty happy with the binding. Even though I had some sort of mobius thing going on when I went to join the ends, I managed to work it out in the end. Around the edges of the quilt I have done some straight quilting, using my walking foot. I wasn't sure what to do here, so I asked AJ for some advice. I think it's a winner.


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The label. I am much happier with my blanket stitch on this one than on the one I did for the boys' eye spy quilt. I used a slightly different (probably non-conventional) method that seems to work better for me.

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I placed some corners at the top of the quilt to allow it to be hung from a rod on the wall. AJ shows how to do this on her blog.

I almost forgot to mention, I'm not sure if you can tell by the photos, but I did some Trapunto on the quilt. There is extra padding behind all of my appliqué. I used a technique that I was able to sort of work out from the instructions for Kellie Wulfsohn's monster quilt in the Australian Homespun magazine. If I was designing a quilt again, and I wanted to do trapunto, I would probably avoid some of the tiny gaps I had to get around as trimming away the extra batting was rather tricky - I was so scared I was going to chop a great big hole in my quilt whilst I was doing this!

8 comments:

  1. That look fantastic and I love the extra detail you put in including the whole family as the creatures in the garden. Miss Tilly is one very lucky little girl :)

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  2. Excellent quilt, and I really love the way you quilted it - the quilted border is great, and the ghosted tree is beautiful!

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  3. Wow, this is amazing, I love it!

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  4. That is absolutely beautiful Carmel. How could you bear to give it away?

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  5. This is absolutely gorgeous Carmel. I'll have one in the next swap please!! So much thought and care. I don't see what is unconventional about the blanket stitch - looks like how I do it?
    Susan

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  6. I ADORE this!!!! Love love love!!!!
    Mox

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  7. Oh wow! That is simply stunning! The detail in each element in amazing and it's just so sweet how each family member is represented!

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  8. This is so very stunning. Out of this world stunning. So meaniful. So beautiful. Fabulous Carmel.

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