improvisational quilting - the green triangles quilt
I finished the top for this green quilt today. It’s sat on my pile waiting for the ‘right’ moment for a few too many weeks, and then in a burst of enthusiasm I jumped up and got the last bits all joined together. Now it’s ready for the backing and to make a quilt sandwich, then hand stitch the quilting stitches.
I’ve been documenting the progress for my online quilting course, so will film more tomorrow including the sandwich process and then the hand stitching to do the quilting.
The main inspiration for this quilt, when I first began the triangle sections was aerial landscapes - looking at fields from out of a plane. Which, really makes for a lot of inspiration for my quilt ideas (even if not many of them are yet made).
Once I started on the triangles, cutting them into size and then sewing the pieces together to become squares - I must admit I got a little bored of doing that many triangles. I knew I would, because having such repetitive work for me isn’t joyful.
So, that’s where the larger blocks, rectangles of colour come into play. Due, in part, to necessity for me to keep going with the project. BUT - also, because I knew that I’d be bored looking at the quilt with all triangles only. I knew I needed it to have these larger patches for eye to rest on.
I talk about it in my course, but during the process I deliberately made some of the triangles match up into ‘perfect’ pinwheels, but most of them I didn’t. I like my quilting to work within the wonky, so that the imperfections and “mistakes” don’t show off as much in a whole perfection.
The whole reason I started myself on a journey of Fear-less quilting was that I wanted to challenge and push myself beyond the ridiculous self-imposed blocks that I was creating due to not being accurate, or wanting to worry about every seam allowance being exactly the same. I’ve written more about my Fear-less Quilting journey here, if you want to read about that first time I really stepped into a new way for my own thinking.
Green Triangles Quilt details:
white is (undyed) linen
green is a combination of different natural fibres, cotton, linen, hemp that is from cut up clothing
pink is linen dyed with avocado seeds and loquat leaves
patterned greens are silk that were gifted to me already cut to the squares - these were the decision to go with the size of the triangles in the first place.
I’ll be using cotton wadding inside
hopefully when I search through my fabrics tomorrow I’ll find enough green hemp that I know I used to have. Otherwise I’ll piece as much greens as possible, with some pinks and use a few of the triangle patches throughout.
will be hand quilted with silk thread - probably dyed pink and undyed natural
I won’t have a quilt binding, as I personally like the look of no binding. I realised I’ve forgotten to share photos about this and why I prefer this version, even though it’s absolutely the ‘non-traditional’ way to edge a quilt.
I’ll share the finished quilt in about a week or so - hopefully be able to have a lovely special photo shoot to show off. But watch my Instagram, as there will possibly be little sneak peeks of my doing the hand stitching work; I’m going to teach my daughter how to hand quilt so we can work on it together.
If you’d like to learn about my online Fearless and Improvisational Quilting workshop / ecourse, click the image below. I’ll help you to move beyond traditional quilting, to stop worrying about making mistakes, or having to fuss about every seam being the exact same perfect size. My course throws all those notions upside down, so you can create your own textile artwork that is also useful and beautiful.
