This quilt began as a Easter themed portrait of a woman wearing a Easter bonnet. I went on Pinterest and searched Easter hats and then vintage Easter hats. I wanted the emphasis on the hat (and not hair/fashions) and the vintage styles with the big brims and flowers were my favorite!
I then wanted to use my line drawing style and a variety of 5" squares. I wanted pastels and soon found I didn't have very many in my stash. Also the pastel dots/stripes/flowers on a white background were in short supply too! I subscribe to a monthly color way packet of 8 FQs from Pink Castle Fabrics in Ann Arbor MI which started in January. The 3 colorways I have received have helped with some of the pastels. I spent Friday and Saturday at the IQF Chicago quilt show desperately looking for pastel batiks and did find a few but this quilt was finished.
I have 5 squares across and 9 squares tall. I started with the 6 white prints then decided to vertically use the warm colors above the whites and the cool colors below the whites. I did this on purpose because I feel purple VISUALLY appears darker and heavier than the other colors and heavy should live on the bottom of the quilt so the mind accepts it and it doesn't look top heavy.
Why choose purple for the applique? For this same reason that purple is again VISUALLY the darkest color in the mix thus creating the greatest contrast which is very important with this style of quilt. Plus Spring seems to scream of purple!
The second photo shows where I hand sewed a variety of pastel purple buttons and a few small beads to the center of the bonnet flowers. I also hand sewed another style of beads, chunky this time, to the lower edge of the dress collar.
The face received pink and purple glitter nail polish to the eyes and lips. I really wanted to emphasize the hat and found a fun ombre colored shimmery ribbon which I machine sewed to the inside of the brim and I liked it! The background got a few rhinestones for bling.
I used a Sulky pastel Blendables thread in 30 weight for almost all of the quilting.
This is a photo of all the potential embellishments for this quilt. I started with an Easter theme but it morphed into a Spring thing so the Easter bunny buttons and Easter egg garland was edited out. The foam and felt flowers/butterflies were too much of a good thing and also wasn't used. I did seem to have enough pastel embellishment for this project.
This was my backing fabric and I love it but it wasn't pastel and stood out too much with the other fabrics. It was sad to let it go but I used it for the backing and the sleeve.
Since Victoriana has a Spring theme and not an Easter theme I can let it hang on my wall a little longer now!!
No comments:
Post a Comment