Following the Fabric
by Ellen Lindner
To start my most recent quilt I pulled out a lot of my hand dyed/printed fabrics that I thought might go together.
Fabrics for consideration
I immediately noticed two fabrics that were singing together nicely: the large black and pink polka dot, and the yellow-green printed piece with the twig motif, (top left.) I liked the way the delicate twigs contrasted with the larger bold circles.
Starting with those two pieces I began to arrange things on the design wall. In the photo below I had committed to the central arrangement and sewn that area together. The side pieces were folded for auditioning purposes.
At this point (above,) the fabric was already leading me quite a bit. For one thing that was ALL the twiggy fabric I had, so that dictated the size of the piece. I wanted a stripe, but didn’t have one, so I cut into a section of the large rectangles, seen on the left, to create a striped patterned. You can see it pinned in place just right of center.
I thought that stripe was competing a little with the dots on the side so I added a piece of solid black. That gave the calm spot that was needed. I also worked on the top right corner, shown pinned only. It was coming together. But, the left clearly needed to have some visual weight added.
I tried a variety of things and eventually came up with this, called I’ll Bring the Kiwi. I added some some hand stitched twigs and I really liked the effect.
Here’s an idea of what it might look like installed in someone’s home.
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