Friday, January 23, 2015

Gardens of Rock


Songbird by Fleetwood Mac


Finally, a new quilt in progress.  This design and theme have been in my head for some time now, maybe a year!  Maybe 40 years?  

I have never lost my love of rock music, most of it from the '60's and '70's.  And of course there is also my love of nature and gardens.

So I am designing a very large quilt, 89" x 89" where 8 of my favorite songs will rock on. 



Basic Block Sketch


The black background center represents a vinyl record and will be appliquéd with each song's theme, all in nature or garden motifs.  The first tier surrounding the record has appliquéd diamonds (diamond needle to play the record) on an ivory (in honor of my piano playing) background.


Next will be a tier of different colored pieced arcs - the colors here will not be used, I just crayoned the arcs to get the feel.  

The last tier will be again use black and ivory fabrics and will consist of different pieced tiny quilt blocks such as a nine patch, to represent my love for quilting.  I didn't sketch all the pieces in the outer tiers, they appear blank. I think each one will be a different quilt block. These outer tiers will mesh or converge with each other as shown here:


Gardens of Rock layout





Harvest Moon by Neil Young





Colours by Donovan



I will need 274 diamonds for this quilt for the first tiers.  These diamonds will be appliquéd using my favorite technique:  raw edge machine appliqué with fusible web.

I found Heat n Bond EZ Print Lite to use and it is wonderful when multiples of the same shape are needed.  

Trace your shape as many times as will fit on a regular sheet of paper, then run the EZ print sheets through your printer.  I was still able to cut the donut holes as I normally do with fusible web.