The Seeds of an Idea for an Indigo Quilt

Last summer I took my first steps into the world of dyeing with indigo. There's something timeless and so appealing about this colour. Ever since I've been wanting to find a way to incorporate these fabrics into my work, and the opportunity came this spring with an idea of a piece I wanted to try to make. To begin, I selected three of the hand-dyed fabrics and then chose about 10 different batiks and prints of blue in different values to add to those. Some of these I combined into strip units, as seen below - just sewing them together randomly in varying widths was my first step.

Then I pulled out these delicious perle cottons from Colour Complements (find them on Etsy). Lorraine lives on the Sunshine Coast and her work, especially the variegated cottons, are marvellous. They look so striking with the blues, don't you think? Then I added in a piece of hand-dyed cotton I'd purchased from Ricky Tims eons ago, and started making some tall skinny units, and some "blossom" units.

All the while, I was thinking about the joy of winter gardens. I'm not much of a gardener myself, but I am most appreciative of flowers grown by others. And at no time is this more true than in the depths of winter, when it seems as though it's been raining non-stop for 700 days or so. Then by some miracle, right about late January or early February, when I'm beginning to wonder if spring will ever come again, these riotous bouquets of tulips appear in the grocery store. And I for one, never even try to resist the urge to buy these living, glowing, harbingers of spring. And that's what this quilt is about.

 The fun part comes when you try to put all the units together into a harmonious whole, and that's what I'm doing right now. It's a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I will have to wait until sometime in the summer to show you the completed piece, as I hope to enter it in a juried show, and can't reveal it until after that's happened. I thought you might enjoy learning about the process I use, for those who are not so familiar with improvisational piecing. And for those that are, I hope you enjoyed reading about how one quilt began, all the same.

Blue Birds and Indigo

Over the years I have collected all sorts of indigo prints. Some of these are African, some Japanese, some batiks, and there are even a few North American prints in there. From time to time I've sewn these together into blocks, using improvisational piecing. The centre blocks are all African indigo prints, most of them birds, I cut these into different sizes, and then surround them in strips of different widths, always ending up with a 12 1/2" square. The time finally came this month to put them all together into one quilt - a queen-sized quilt for my sister Sara - and to do it, I used that most traditional of settings - sashing with tiny squares. Making it has made me realize that improvisational piecing or improvisational quilting really is something that's on a continuum. This quilt is closer to a traditional quilt, with only a few characteristics moving it towards improvisation. Other pieces I've made have strips that are different widths along the length of them, or are cut out with scissors, and end up in blocks that are "wonky". But sometimes a more formal arrangement seems appropriate, as happened here. However one describes the process, it still had lots of variation to keep my interest going (I seem to get bored by making the same quilt block over and over again), and gave me great pleasure to make. Now on to something just a little more daring . . .

Home from Hornby

Well, here I am, back home from my "artist's retreat" on Hornby Island. It was terrific - taking time apart from the busy-ness of life to be creative, to focus on my work, to think about what direction I want to go in. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Without the usual distractions of life, I have better been able to narrow down what kind of work I want to do, and confirmed in myself a new, and somewhat unexpected direction. In addition to quilting, I did a lot of journalling (this is a decades-old practice that I find very helpful in sorting out my thoughts, as well as for unloading concerns and cares that have the potential to divert me from what I really want to do), and collecting of images that inspire me and sorting through those. I was able to concentrate on eating a healthier diet, and getting outside for daily exercise - all those good things that are part of a more balanced life. It was good, very good. So . . . . I thought I'd show you just a couple of the pieces I worked on, besides
the Hornby Quilters journal pieces. "To Market, To Market" is the first in a series of improvisational studies I am embarked on making. I used a painted barkcloth image as the focal point, and built around it, with strip units that were cut in different widths, some of them wedge-shaped and some not, and sliced apart to make a border for the focal point. In the second study - So Many Zebras", I began by making curved strip-units, and then cutthem apart and put them back together again. I will show you others in this series as they evolve. Next is a piece called "Windows on Africa". I made a grid by couching very thin strips of African fabrics,
then filled in the squares with scraps of some of the many African wax fabrics that I have used in the past. It's a playful "What If?" piece, and measures 16" X 36". "Knight" is the last piece I worked on, and it still needs quilting. I used Ruth McDowell's method to break down a photo of Knight, one of the Bitengye Designers, as she was ironing on a table underneath the trees. It will be the first in a series of quilts featuring African women. As you've probably gathered, I am focussing on African-inspired work at the moment. I am using African fabrics, and other fabrics that work well with these, as well as African artwork, and have tucked most everything else away for now. And this is what I plan to continue working with in the coming weeks and months. Thanks for letting me share this with you.