House Series #39

 

A dear friend at church took me aside and said he wanted to give his wife one of my quilts for Christmas. There aren't many (affordable) quilts available that might work and the thought of making a small one or quilting up an existing top, surfaced in my mind, but I made no promises. But I did say that I was looking for a sign to get back into the studio and maybe this was it. Gulp.

It's been a while and I felt rusty. But there was something I had wanted to make, or shall I say, remake and I pulled up the image of the previous quilt and used that as a stimulus. This time I would make it much bigger, something that would look good on a 20"square wood panel.  If this worked I could offer it as a sample of a small work, or even let him buy this one. But I am getting ahead of myself. 

First I had to make it. 

This meant getting my head out of knitting mode and back into fabric. The studio dance had to begin. 

1. Set up my Bluetooth and Pandora for music

2. Make a big pot of tea

3. Pull fabric and find the Teflon pressing sheet

4. Where are my rotary cutters?

5. Cut a piece of batting to get the feel for size

6. Decide where to start

The house is the place and finding fabric for that got me rolling. I made a big mess, but that is how this works. It wasn't until the second day that I got in a large folding table to hold all the possible fabrics and scraps and get them off my work surface. But by then I was almost finished. 

I was ready to place the tree and had to find just the right fabric for this color scheme. It must be color changing, in just the right way. Aha! I found it. Then came fusing the top to the batting for the hand embroidery part. Next came the quilting. On a piece like this I usually quilt with feed dogs up, vs free motion. Stitching in the ditch first, and then later I will find a spot to do a little decorative free motion design, and sign my name.  

Matching a thread to the fabric makes this part very subtle until one gets close up.

That's it. Done-aroo. I use these wonderful sticky Velcro dots from Walmart to adhere the quilt to the wood panel which finishes off the piece in a most professional way, in my humble opinion. 

I'll send pics of this and the smaller house quilt that I have in inventory to the client and see if he bites.  

I'm pricing this at $250 and this 12" square one at $100.