Friday, January 29, 2016

Skydiving Turtles

A neighborhood quilt group meets monthly at my house.  During the past year, we have made a "block of the month" to try out new patterns.  People are invited to make up a few samples from the pattern and when we meet again the following month we draw to see who will win the opportunity to make the blocks into a quilt for herself.

To be honest, I was hoping to win these Drunkard's Path Turtle blocks!  The assignment was to use a black solid for the background and to make the turtles out of and "ugly" fabric -- or one that looked like a turtle.  As usual, it is interesting what people think of as "ugly."

Our group laid the blocks on the floor and laughingly arranged them as if the turtles were holding hands, "like skydivers!" The swirly, star-filled sashing fabric was chosen because it suggested sky and its varied blacks made the variation in black background fabrics less obvious.  Swirls are repeated in the quilting design and on the yellow and gold dotted batik fabric on the back, as well as in a few of the prints.  To communicate ocean waves, I would turn the quilting template the other direction, but what we were after is swirls and whorls.

When the sixteen blocks were stitched together, they made a nice baby quilt-sized top.  Three of my adult-sized children asked who would get this quilt, for each of them wanted it!  Because many of the turtles were made of other people's scraps, I wondered how to draw the turtle colors out into the border.  I considered making four wavy snakes in the borders, giving them similarly dimensional heads and tail ends; this might suggest that the snakes were waiting for the skydivers to fail!

Making a border of random-pieced squares solved the problem.  A few of the turtle fabrics are scattered into the border, but others in similar hues and shapes serve to communicate that the quilt was planned this way, rather than that the top was too small and needed to be stretched.

The heads and tails of the turtles are slightly stuffed and they flop about a little.  The quilt needed to be hand quilted so these 3D effects wouldn't be lost or make trouble.  I am using a wool batting, which I really like to work with.  I try to work on this project for a little while each day, while listening to a General Conference talk or to my daily scripture reading.  In a few days it will be a friendly cuddle quilt, invitingly draped over the arm of the front room couch. 

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