Words and Background

Janice has done a wonderful job on the background fabric. She came round to my place today so we could put the words and background together. The first photo shows the words in the arrangement we agreed on. I think it looks fantastic!


The second photo shows the correct orientation (more or less, maybe it needs to go round clockwise a little bit more) and the corners folded back to give some idea of the finished shape. The colour is not as good in this photo, changing light I suppose and an inxperienced camera operator (me!) The quilt will be an irregular shape when finished. Janice and I talked about how to hang it so that it stays vertical and I suggested using plastic template sheet in pockets on the corners like I had read on someone else's blog a couple of weeks ago. We decided to use black fabric for the backing and cotton batting. When I have purchased them it is back out to Janice's for basting it together. Yipee.

I haven't used cotton batting before. Janice says its wonderful to quilt with so I'm looking forward to that. We also discussed how to do the edge and options for quilting, but I must confess that after 5 hours of prep today my concentration was waning (a lot! sorry Janice) and I didn't take much of that in. I am not the world's greatest quilter so I will be following Janice's advice here (if only I was listening!!). The backgrounds of the words are just pinned on at the moment. I think I will tack them onto the background and then we will baste the whole thing. The quilting stage will be when the words and their backgrounds get stitched to the painted background. I am going to stitch the word backgrounds in from the edge so they fray to represent feeling 'roughed up'. This will be echoed in the edge of the quilt itself.

We also talked about options for the cross in the middle. I was going to make it of a piece of leather belt and a piece of elecrical cord that I have on hand, but one is light and one is dark and when we held it up against the quilt top we realised it wouldn't show properly as a cross. Janice suggested making both parts of the cross from the belt. When I saw that meant cutting it in half I thought "yes" that sounds right and I had a sense of gaining back the power that I had lost. I asked Janice if we were going to be brave enough to show the quilt at our club 'show and tell'. Janice said that was entirely up to me. I'm not sure yet but I think I will when it is finished even though I will feel a bit exposed. (I'm more worried that they will think it is a dud than that I might have to tell my story, where has my confidence gone?)