This time I would like to introduce you Hanneke, our friend from the IWC quilting group. She just finished her quilt, what she made for her daughter, Katy. I took some pictures of this beautiful, colorful quilt during our quilting session at the IWC office. Hanneke kindly offered to write about her inspiration for the quilt.
Katy's African childhood quilt by Hanneke Wood"I had been thinking for some time about a quilt for Katy to take to University with her -while we were visiting the
School of Stitched textiles last summer (I am doing an online
City and Guilds course with them) Katy spotted and fell in love with a border fabric, warm colours and African people and I found an equally enchanting fabric with African mothers and babies (both
Timeless Treasures but discontinued I think). To complete the challenge Katy found a very bright and vibrant green batik to include in the quilt.
Where to start - we poured over books, looking for inspiration, and finally used some ideas from Roberta Horton's The fabric makes the quilt (Lafayette, 1995)- her design concepts were particularly helpful, "Repetition makes things go together" , "It's important that the line is'nt straight" , "Don't centre", "Keep the eye moving" and "If it's too big, cut it off. If it's too small, add on to it."
I explored my stash and 'auditioned' lots of fabrics, a continuing process in the making of this quilt as it evolved! I used lots of batiks, some 'klimt' fabrics (Makower ) whose colours were perfect, and some of 'Jabulisa's' African printed fabrics. I then started my making 'wonky blocks' centred around the themed fabrics, and the quilt started to grow. After much rearrangement, the quilt top was complete, bordered with a deep red batik from Evy at Quilterspalet here in The Hague and I chose to back it with a soft checked flannel - I asked North Sea Quilters to machine quilt it for me, which Marybeth has done beautifully, quilting in the ditch and including a border pattern inspired by the recurring zigzagging triangles in the African fabrics.
The warm vivid colours, and the liveliness of this quilt remind me of Africa where Katy spent the first three years of her life. Absolutely the best quilt to accompany her on the next step in her life!"
Thank you Hanneke for sharing your story behind the quilt. We were lucky in the IWC patchwork group to enjoy looking at and quilting beside this cheerful quilt for a while and we didn't let Hanneke to take it off from the wall until it was time to go home.
I wish Katy that this quilt will bring her the comfort and the warmth of home when she her new life at university.
Maria
www.northseaquilters.com
This time I would like to introduce you Hanneke, our friend from the IWC quilting group. She just finished her quilt, what she made for her daughter, Katy. I took some pictures of this beautiful, colorful quilt during our quilting session at the IWC office. Hanneke kindly offered to write about her inspiration for the quilt.
1 comment:
Another Beautiful Quilt, Hanneke! The last one I saw was a dolphin quilt when we were in Brunei. In this one I especially like your use of the blues and greens as a border/background to the hot squares in the middle. I really like the combination of colours.
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