Tuesday 16 August 2011

Patchwork Quilt - Complete!!!

Hello there :)

So, my first ever blog: the monster patchwork quilt I just exhibited at Festival of Quilts (UK).
It was my first time at the show and it was utterly faboulous - the range and scope of just what people can do with a quilt is breathtaking, and there's so many pieces to inspire me to get another one of my own underway!!



But some details about mine:
  • Name - 'Billie Joe Armstrong' (named after rock band 'Greenday' frontman)
  • English hand-pieced over paper, entirely hand-sewn together (since this made it portable, it's been dragged around all sorts of places: I have sewn it in motorway traffic jams and in the pub)
  • Each hexagon is the size of a 5 pence piece - about thumbnail-ish
  • Duration - on and off, a year (it was picked up and put down whenever, bearing in mind I'm doing a degree as well!)
  • Size - 2.7m x 1.8m
  • No digital imaging - I didn't run the photo through a Photoshop filter to pixelate it, yep, I did it 'by eye' as you would do the shading on a charcoal drawing
  • 40 different black and white prints were used in total - but no grey! - the rule was they had to be entirely b/w.
  • The only 'pure white' were the few highlighting the end of his nose and inside his eye - everything else had some degree of black print.
  • It started off as 'occupational therapy' following a bad illness: it was the ideal thing to pick up and return to, and I think did more good than all the medication they threw at me...
  • Thank God for daylight bulbs, caffiene, and the thimble.....!