All bound and tied and pressed…at last! I finished the top of this quilt last September, along with several other strippies, simply strips sewn together making a pattern when put together with the other strips. The process was very simple …. I bought several pieces of feature fabric…..grabbed co-ordinating ones from the stash….then fretted for a few days because I didn’t have enough blacks and grey accent fabrics. My friend asked me to get her some of it too, as usual, so I went back into the city to get hers and the rest of the blacks and greys at the same time. While I was there I bought the cranes in two other colourways so that anyone body else who liked it would have a bit of a choice within the context of the design.
The other two colours are burnt orange and a sage/silver green with more brown than black accents. I luckily have a lot of accent fabrics for those two quilts so did not have to buy any more at the time and also did not show my friend the other colourways as I can only take so much imitation. I actually don’t find it flattering as I go to great lengths to find my fabrics and need to keep some semblance of originality going.
The top was easy to run up, in fact I made several tops in a few weeks in the strippy style, mostly shabby chic ones though. A few months ago I sandwiched this one together using a pair of almost new Laura Ashley curtains as backing and then I tied it, then I took those ties out and quilted it using largish naive stitches in perle thread. I hated it! It just lost all its appeal to me so I put it away until a few weeks ago when I decided to unpick all the quilting stitches and retie it. After binding it with the remaining pieces of fabric joined together scrappy style I was more than happy with the result. I think you will be too if only because it is so different from my usual dark florals and scrappy quilts. It has a contempory feel which I like and I can’t wait to find my black oriental vases and various other china to photograph with the quilt for my decorating with textiles group on flickr, have to keep up with Sally and all the other wonderful people there!
