A Quilting Rabbit Hole and a New Quilting Project

On Sunday evening, after an afternoon of working on my current quilt project, I slipped down a quilting rabbit hole on YouTube. I'd read an article earlier in the day about a quilt that had sold at auction for just under $88,000. 

It was amazing to see that quilting is finally being taken seriously as an art form and that vintage and antique quilts with certain provenance are selling for such amazing sums of money. The article mentioned various quilters whose work is very collectable. One such group of quilters was the Gees Bend Quilters of Alabama, USA.

I'd never heard of this group, as I've never really looked into the history of quilting, save for what I've seen at exhibitions and in museums, so I decided to look them up on YouTube where there were numerous videos about their quilts and their lives. Very interesting too. Some of their designs are quite abstract and very colourful. I was fascinated.

I decided to make a YouTube quilting playlist, so that I could save lots of quilting videos and watch them at my leisure, which is what I've been doing since. It only takes having a bit of free time for the quilting bug to get hold of me again.

In other quilting news, I ordered a set of hexagonal quilting templates on eBay last week and they arrived today.  Here's a picture of the full set which cost £5 including postage. I thought this was a bargain.

There are various ways you can use them, although they didn't come with instructions. I guess the inside of the hollow hexie is the paper size and the outside the fabric size. Anyway, I won't be using a template for the fabric, I just pin the paper pieces to the fabric and cut around them. I picked one that seemed to be the best size for my new project and I've already started to use it to cut out some paper pieces for the project.

I do love all the different stages of doing a hand sewn paper pieced quilt. The initial cutting out of paper pieces, which I can do whilst I'm watching YouTube videos, then the choosing and cutting out of the fabric pieces. The hand pinning and basting of the hexies, followed by hand sewing them together to make the quilt top. (I often do these latter bits whilst watching TV). I think the parts I like the least are attaching the wadding and backing, as these to me are the trickiest bits.

Anyway, the design for the new quilt is called Diamond Field I believe, and it's believed to date back as far as pre-Civil war in the US, although I believe it was named in 1932. It's similar to Grandma's Flower Garden, but instead of flowers, you create diamonds with the hexies and place them on a one colour background.  

There's an example of a similar quilt to the one I want to make which I found on Pinterest. You can see it here  http://byov.blogspot.com/2012/05/slowly-but-surely.html The hexie they've used for this one, however, is much larger and the background a different colour to the colour I'm going to use. I love the simplicity of the design. I may make it as a bed quilt, a lap quilt or even a wall hanging. I'm not sure which yet. I guess I'll just see how it goes.

I haven't chosen the fabrics I'm going to use for the diamonds yet, although I have pulled a few out of my stash to see how they might go together. The background fabric I'm using is dark grey and the size of the quilt will depend on how much of it I have left after finishing making a chair cover with it.

It was originally a large pair of IKEA linen curtains. I used one curtain to make the majority of the chair cover and I still need to use part of the second curtain to make the chair cushion cover. Whatever is left after that, will be used for the quilt, hence why I can't really gauge the size until that project is finished, but it doesn't prevent me from getting started, which is very exciting.

I'll keep you posted on progress and show you some of the diamonds when I've actually made some.