penny-studionotes-2

This quilt has been in the making for seven years.  In winter of 2005, I signed up for a Design Workshop with Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr that would be held that June.  We were told to come with three ideas for quilts.  My first idea (and the only one, until about a week before the workshop) was to do something about the midwestern landscape in which I live.  Toward the end of March, I drove out into the countryside, and took a lot of photos.  I bought fabric in the range of late-winter colors that I held in my mind.  (Missing from the memory is the predominant straw color that I see when I look back at the photos--which I find interesting, but didn't made me change the palette.)  Shortly before the workshop, another idea took over, and I worked on that quilt, " Loss ," for three years.  Not long after I finished "Loss," I went to a multi-media workshop at Arrowmont, and, using thick layers of pastel on 9x12 sheets of pastel paper, I made a kind o...

I did go ahead and make sew up the five large pieces of silk brocade into a quilt.  I used Dream Puff batting and a cordoroy backing, with quilting in about 9" squares, making it into a kind of comforter.  I wanted a warm quilt for napping on the couch, which led me to Dream Puff.  (I learned about this batting from Weeks Ringle--see this post .)  To get the "comforter" look, I sewed the layers with a "pillowcase" finish rather than using regular binding.  I'd never done this on anything larger than a placemat before, so the size was a challenge.  Also, the silk is quite challenging to sew with because of how slippery it is, and because it gives quite a bit in sewing, rather than holding its shape.  I was pleased that it ending up working out all right.  I did a few small trials along the way, for one part or another of the process, and that helped.  It also helped that I had some experience at this point with the fabric after sewing the scar...