Back to the Drawing Board
It’s been quiet around here, but I’ve been working on both some new patterns (more on those soon!) and some just-for-fun personal projects. In the latter category, both of the local quilt groups I’m involved with put out periodic challenges to make a quilt based on certain guidelines. The challenges I’ve enjoyed most are ones where the title of the quilt is chosen ahead of time, and you then have to make a quilt that corresponds to that title (see a previous challenge of this type here).
The guidelines for this challenge were that the quilt had to be 24″ x 36″ in size, include black and white fabrics, and be inspired by an idiom chosen from a list we were provided with. While I was momentarily tempted by “cutting corners”—imagine not having to pay any attention to your points!—the idiom that really spoke to me was “back to the drawing board,” which is the title of this quilt!
I played with one of my favorite concepts in quilts, disintegration, in this—my little story for the quilt is that the block broke and therefore it’s back to sketching out a new one on a chalkboard. The extreme contrast in this quilt is hard to photograph, so here’s a lighter version of the full quilt photo so you can see the stitching in the black:
I played with a lot of different techniques in this quilt, which was super fun. The Lone Star piecing uses both traditional and improvisational piecing (for the disintegrating section).
I used my domestic machine for the quilting on this quilt since the solid lines in the black section were done by couching down some sparkly Wonderfil Dazzle thread (similar to a perle cotton thread, so too thick to go through a sewing machine needle). The lines were extended as dashed lines with hand quilting (embroidery, really, because I didn’t end up going through all three layers), and in between I’ve got some dense matchstick quilting with black thread.
The chalk lines need some more erasing, it seems!
I really wanted a strong contrast with the portion of the quilt that has a white background, so that section is free-motion quilted, and I tried to choose a pretty traditional style of quilting for a Lone Star to really amp up the contrast with the modern straight line quilting in the black section. I used a ruler for the curves inside the pieced block, just to keep them really even (and to practice using a ruler with a domestic machine!).
I did extend the disintegration into the quilting, very similar to what I did on my Artichokes quilt.
The binding, of course, had to be matched so as to not break up the flow of the design. (You can watch my tutorial on how I do these matched bindings here.)
The only problem is all the fuzz that the black solid attracts. Black is such a great neutral to work with, but I always seem to forget what a pain black fabrics are in terms of both attracting fuzz and getting the quilting to show up in photos. Dark gray is probably the better choice, but I’ve got much of a bolt of black solid left to use, so it will probably keep appearing in my quilts!
Clever. Love all the details!
I’ve never tried a black batting, but maybe the next quilt you use with black fabric you can give it a shot? It would have been interesting to piece an angled batting for this one. 🙂 Lovely work and great contrast. Have you shown it to your guild yet? How was it received?
I love it.
How great! I love it! I totally thought chalkboard as soon as I saw it, before I read it in your text. I am always in awe of your matched bindings. Such a fun project!
This is so cool!