Thanks everyone for your positive response to my block arrangement in yesterday's post. Wanda (Exuberant Color) advised: "You finally just have to say "enough" and sew them together." So true and so hard to do, but I knew that was the plan for today. However, I wasn't comfortable with the lower right corner, so I took about 10 minutes this morning to turn a few blocks and am much happier now with the total balance. I didn't want too much symmetry, but I also didn't want any one section to stop the eye with a question of, is that off? I was avoiding making any full circles, I'm not sure why, but as you can see, I added one in that troublesome corner. I turned one other block too. Can you spot it?
Once I said, "Enough!" the blocks went together rather quickly. I decided to press the block join seams open even though some would have been less bulky if pressed to one side. Since there was no consistency in which way the seem might naturally fall, I knew it would only create more problems when I started sewing rows together. Not every seam needed pinning, just those where there were seams intersecting, which accounts for how fast I could sew this all together.
I cut apart one of my late husband's shirts to use as backing. He was quite tall so by sewing the fronts on either end of the back (after squaring things up), The one shirt was just enough. I'll layer it tomorrow, probably spray basting since safety pins will leave visible holes in both the silk and the hand-dyes. I'm thinking quite simple quilting, perhaps even with silk thread: some stitching in the ditch around those points, and widely spaced echo stitching in the frames and centers. No border necessary, and if you look closely at the picture above, you can see I'm already contemplating binding color. I'm very tempted to go with that orange on the left, although there's not enough left. I do have quite a bit of the slightly less intense orange that I can substitute. Or should I go with a dark navy like you see on the right side? Click on the picture for a larger view.
Once I said, "Enough!" the blocks went together rather quickly. I decided to press the block join seams open even though some would have been less bulky if pressed to one side. Since there was no consistency in which way the seem might naturally fall, I knew it would only create more problems when I started sewing rows together. Not every seam needed pinning, just those where there were seams intersecting, which accounts for how fast I could sew this all together.
I cut apart one of my late husband's shirts to use as backing. He was quite tall so by sewing the fronts on either end of the back (after squaring things up), The one shirt was just enough. I'll layer it tomorrow, probably spray basting since safety pins will leave visible holes in both the silk and the hand-dyes. I'm thinking quite simple quilting, perhaps even with silk thread: some stitching in the ditch around those points, and widely spaced echo stitching in the frames and centers. No border necessary, and if you look closely at the picture above, you can see I'm already contemplating binding color. I'm very tempted to go with that orange on the left, although there's not enough left. I do have quite a bit of the slightly less intense orange that I can substitute. Or should I go with a dark navy like you see on the right side? Click on the picture for a larger view.
5 comments:
This is a bit of Serendipity. A friend rang this morning, would I like all her husbands ties? Yes please.
Did you use iron on interfacing? Apparently all these ties are pure silk.
Yes, on the majority of the pieces I used "French Fuse" which is a wider version of "Knit Fuse" - see this post: http://idahobeautyquilts.blogspot.com/2008/08/working-with-silk.html
I used some of the tie linings as well, and stabilized them with the same fusible. It's light weight and soft so doesn't really change the hand of the silk. French Fuse is available through Clotilde.
I vote orange
i llke the orange or how about some left over tie pieces in the binding.
A blue binding is too dark. Orange lifts the quilt to a higher level.
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