IQA Donation Quilt-2015-“Windswept”

I’m down to the wire on my Houston prep and one of the things I just got to was my donation quilt. Quilt Inc. is the non-profit umbrella organization of the quilt show. Each year they ask their teachers to consider donating a small quilt to raise funds for the organization. I’ve donated one each year I’ve taught and I really wanted to do that again. But this year I’m barely getting it done in time.

You, um, may have noticed that I seem to be in a series based on grasses and other drought tolerant plants. Windswept is part of that series. I do have a challenge or focus for each quilt and in this case, I wanted to see how edited I could be and still make a strong statement. My focus here is on the beauty of the Maiden Grass and the gesture of the seed head in the wind. I had planned for more grass in this piece but I stopped here-I think this is just enough.

The detail gives you a feel of what I’m saying when I write about the “gesture” of the seed head. All the little fronds move independently. I’m such a grass geek!

I constructed it so that the center panel hangs free, just in case the buyer wants to peek at the stitching on the back. I like the dimensionality and the way it kicks out a bit from the back panel.

I do think this kind of work needs to be faced, not bound. I recently saw a piece on Judy Coates Perez‘s site that showed the facing on the back of her work and she mitered her corners. Well, I decided that looked super cool so I had to miter mine also! She has a tutorial on it on her blog here and that was my guide.

I recently faced another quilt and was a little unhappy about how the facing wanted to roll forward, so I did understitch the facing as you can see here. It does make it roll better. But, I did learn that you can’t understitch before you make the mitered corners. I put on all the facings and understitched before I realized my mistake, so I had to rip it all out and redo all the facings. Ugh.

There was already a lot of bulk from the doubled facing and I did not want to put a bulky sleeve on top of that. So I made my sleeve from silk organza which cuts down on the bulk significantly.

As usual, I took something that should have been simple and made it difficult. This turned out to be way more work than I thought. The center piece took a little while but the back piece was previously quilted for a project I didn’t go forward with, so it was just sitting around in inventory. Isn’t this sounding like it should be a quick, easy project?

But it’s really two quilts, so each one had to be faced and understitched and then the facing sewn down by hand. Then of course there is the sleeve and label. That “finishing” process took way longer than constructing the top! I always manage to do this. I am happy with the way it turned out and I hope that its new owner loves it.

So off I go to Houston on Sunday and I’ll be gone 8 days. All my classes are full except my Monday afternoon class has 7 seats available. I’ve got an aggressive schedule with 9 events. I’m excited! If you’re there, say hi!

I’ll be linking up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday so be sure to check out the links there.