Contemporary quilts

This is one of my activities that hasn't had a mention on this blog so far. I belong to the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles, and to a special interest group within it - the contemporary quilt group. This year the group has a journal quilt challenge going, to do one A4 size quilt a month for 2007. We can use any inspiration, theme, technique we want, particularly though trying to stretch ourselves and experiment a bit.

I've decided to work through some techniques that interest me, that I've seen in books or at exhibitions and meant to try out. And I want to link it to the month each time in some way - colours maybe.

So here is how I arrived at January (but a pic of the completed piece will be in the next post because I forgot I've not put it on the computer yet!!!!)

1. Sketch of the view I see from my workroom and the kitchen all winter - a hedge of hawthorn along the towpath side of the Macclesfield canal, at the bottom of our garden.2. A simplified version which got traced onto vilene . . .

4. This base fabric, hand dyed, was placed on some domette . .
5. . . . and overlaid with various fabric strips.

6. . . which were stitched down with horizontal rows of machine stitching.

7. I painted a piece of calico. This was laid on the background, and using the vilene pattern I stitched the design outline from the back of the work.
8. Last stage was to cut back the top fabric to reveal the shapes and do some more stitching to 'paint' the trunks a bit more, adding a backing piece of black cotton.

9. Trim to size, stitch round the edges with several rows of a decorative stitch, (I wanted to try an alternative to binding it) and it's done - but the pic is in the post above!.