12 August, 2007

Little Elements of Fire



Little Elements of fire - folded detail


The „4 Elements“ have been this year’s summer exhibition theme of my quilt group. I have been thinking about a red and white log cabin quilt for quite some time and choose to use that idea for the Elements theme.

I love to work with old/vintage cotton though this time the fabric was rather new; t used to be the curtain for my Berlin apartment a few years ago. 3,80 m high walls, big old windows and therefore lots of white cotton….

The red fabric is silk I bought from IKEA two years ago. And I have to admit I regretted using it. It is not colour fast especially when washed with cold / timid water; it suffered from the hot ironing temperature needed for the cotton and the edges frayed a lot.

The batting is the cotton batting 275 from Freudenberg. It is not very heavy; it looks a little bit like it has been felted which I why it does not loose its shape even after several washing or heavy use. Hand quilting it was pretty good too.

It all started with log cabin squares without measuring their size just sewing one after the other whenever I felt like it. Later I had to trim quite a few of them to size.



Log Cabin Quilt WIP 26 of 35





WIP - another corner



When I have already finished many of the squares I started planning the quilt. Thinking about it size, the amount of squares needed for it in the end and especially making up my mind about how to quilt it.

With the little doll quilt I learned how the quilting lines can change a quilts appearance and with the graphic strictness of the log cabin I wanted to add a little “chaos”, some softer lines to my quilt. That is why I went with an all over quilt pattern with circles and half circles to contrast the log cabin squares, again.


Log Cabin Quilt sketch

Quilted but not finished yet.

Little Elements of Fire - quilted but not finished yet


The finished quilt, photographed in front of a window with the sun shining through it. It is beautiful (I am biased I know…) and very comfy.



Little Elements of fire - red and white quilt

26 comments:

Junie Moon said...

Your new quilt is gorgeous and I really enjoyed reading about the process and your thoughts about its construction.

Unknown said...

This is really gorgeous!
Thank you for sharing your process too.

corry said...

A really beautiful quilt! Thanks for sharing, It's alway's so nice to read the story behind a quilt!

Luísa Silva said...

I had never seen a quilt with such transparency. It is magnificent!!

Meredith said...

WELCOME BACK! Your quilt is lovely. I really like the quilt design you chose. It is beautiful in the window with the light shinning.

Catherine said...

This is fabulous and I love that you were able to use yardage from the old curtains. Great job!

Hurrayic said...

I love the translucent quality of the quilt and the simplicity of it although I'm sure it was anything but simple to make. It reminds me of Tiffany stained glass without the color. Love how you've made that one red block slightly larger than all the others.

Kim Carney said...

I was hoping I left a comment when I saw this ... it is stunning! Beautiful!

Anonymous said...

Oh, how I want this quilt. Thank you so much for sharing it. It's perfect.

Susan said...

I love the way you quilted this!

SewIknit2 said...

Its absolutely LOVELY! and I enjoyed your turn-table ironing board post too!
Lovely blog!
Sue

Ex said...

bis eben konnte ich quilts nicht wirklich was abgewinnen. Aber der ist phantastisch schön!

Anonymous said...

I love your quilt! I have been a quilter for over 30 years....much longer than I should admit! There is just nothing like a quilt! And I love your redwork...I have a Christmas/snowman redwork quilt that I love and after seeing your work I think I'm going to have to make one I can leave out all year long! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

is it for sale? it is magnificent.

Anonymous said...

What an gorgeous quilt. I love the idea of few colors.

Kieny The Dutchlady said...

Love your quilt!

rightbrainedamoeba said...

i guess gorgeous is the word! it really is, though! :)

Anonymous said...

I love your quilt and you blog,

from a german living in Australia

love the simplicitiy of little colour in your work.

christine

mecamo said...

Wow, welch ein Aufwand musst dies gewesen sein? Tolle Arbeit, echt, sehr schoen...Ich wuenschte, ich koennte sowas...

Cori Lewis said...

Wow! I love this quilt, I never would have thought to do something like this.

Zarah said...

It is absolutely GORGEOUS!

Isa said...

You may be biased, but I love it to

mon ami said...

this is so beautiful. I love the white-on-white detail and the different sized red squares.

well done!

annaitto said...

GREAT WORK!!!!

Anonymous said...

This is amazing! I had seen this ages ago and lost your link but yay, so happy to find you again :) I just love the simplicity of this and you have inspired me for my quilting bee block month later this year. Thank you for the inspiration :)
Nova
x

monika@mysweetprairie.ca said...

Oh pretty pretty! It's so nice to see German quilting too! : )
~Monika
from Canada