My CHANEL Quilt - done but not finished

I finished the quilt, just in time for our quilt group's exhibition but it did not turn out the way I want/like it. I am calling it death by quilting.... almost nothing of the patched top remaind visible (yes, the double wedding ring blocks are still there...) after I quilted way to many and red diagonal lines.


I am blaming Aurifil as I was not able to buy any thread at the Patchwork Meeting in Saints-Marie-aux-Mines this year, (they sponsor this event and I had no problems in the last years to get my threads, I will have to get myself one of those thread sample cards for color matching and start bying it online, which I hate!) not a single vendor with plain white Aurifil thread. Back at home I bought Sulky/Güterman Quilting thread in "red"- stupid idea but I was desperate only 3 more nights to finish the quilt... The thread quality is not even close to Aurifil's. I have never had that much lint in my sewing life, "Wollmäuse" (bunch of thread big as a mouse) in my sewingmachine, arrg.


Whatever, once I have "him" back I will change the quilting and at least I learned a lot of what I will never do again.

For the fun of it, I am sharing my Double Wedding Ring CHANEL Quilt in this fall’s Blogger's Quilt Festival category “Original Design”

A few quilt details:

• Top Fabrics: Oakshott  Colourshott 01 White Sand , Oakshott Colourshott 31 Marble White, Oakshott Ruby Red 16 Santiago
• Binding:  Oakshott Ruby Red 16 Santiago
• Logos/Bottle/Coco Chanel Protrait/:  not mine! -  all belong to CHANEL but it was fun playing with them…
• Backing:  Oakshott Marble White   –  I won the 3 meters I needed of that beautiful fabric at the “Giveway Monday” end of  July  on Lily’s Quilt blog, lucky me :-)   
• WeddingRing Blocks machine pieced; everything else hand pieced and hand appliquéd, hand "redworked"
• Sewing thread Aurifil white, Appliqué YLI white; Quilting thread Sulky/Gütermann (never again)
• Appliqué: Needle turn and "glue stick" (I would love to try the Apliquik tools for this next time)
• Redwork: Anchor embroidery thread

A few more pictures can be found on 

http://blog.bernina.com/de/user-gallery/double-wedding-ring-chanel-quilt/



Day#2 ::30 Days :: of Quilt Design

Day#2 design "Basics" for the #30DaysofQuiltDesign by @stitchedincolor and @GothamQuilt on Instagram.

This is a shameless red & white copy of the beautiful seersucker design by Corinne Sovey on sunshine.handcraft.

:: 30 Days :: of Quilt Design

A red&white quilt design inspired by the artwork of Debra M Smith (I love her White / Red series pieced with vintage silk kimono fabrics) and the Fine Line Log Cabin Quilt on Purl Soho's Website.

I would like to make a quilt that looks like a improvised pencil drawing just in red and white.



Day#1 "FineLineRed&WhiteQuilt" for #30DaysofQuiltDesign by @stichedincolor and @GothamQuilts

www.stitchedincolor.com/2016/08/30-days-of-quilt-design.html

Chanel Quilt - work in progress

                                              The desing on paper                      

All Double Wedding Ring blocks are done.

Only Oakshottfabrics are CHANEL enough

I am a fan of Kona Cotton they have the most beautiful reds. Cardinal, “Red” Red and Tomato are my favourites and just the right quality of whites too. I love to work with them whenever I use “new” fabrics.  But, for my CHANEL quilt the “simple” cotton was just missing something.

 

I am hording fabrics just like every other quilter, however, what I buy is almost always red , red and white and sometimes plain white if it is a special white fabric. Which means,  I happened to have a fat quarter of Oakshott New-Colourshott White Marble (9131) in my stash of white fabrics. And that was exactly what I wanted for my CHANEL Quilt. A very good quality pure cotton with kind of a “glow” to it without being “chintzy”. Oakshott Fabrics calls it “...a smooth, lustrous finish...” it actually is mercerised Cotton. And as it is regular cotton I still will be able to wash my quilt in the machine because my Chanel Quilt is for cuddling not the catwalk.

Unfortunately, Oakshott fabrics are not readily available in every Quiltshop – at least not in Germany and even on quilt markets at e.g the European Patchwork Meeting only one or two vendors sell it. I found the fantastic shop owner Nina Reingruber from 1001quilt on the Internet .  She has a large range of Oakshott Fabrics and was so kind to even send me little sample swatches of similar colours with my order of whites, black and greys.

Now the fabrics I using are Oakshott New-Colourshott White Marble (9131), New-ColourshottCarmargue (9157) which is an off-white (broken-white) and New-ColourshottBlack (9130). I also have some Oakshott SCANDINAVIA Stockhom (a lighter grey) which I might use as an accent colour.

 

 

 

 

Double anneaux de mariage CHANEL Quilt

Double Wedding Ring "Training"

With my usual method of trial and error my Wedding Rings just did not look nice and round, the way I needed them for Coco Chanel’s initiales.

 

Lucky me, in 2014 Marti Michell was teaching at the “Le Carrefour Européen de Patchwork”(European Patchwork Meeting) in Alsace/Val d’Argent."

 

 

I took the course and learned so much about how to “tweak” the ring to get it round. Not that I am a pro yet but after her course at least I always know what went wrong with my “anneauxs”. In case you want to know I am using Kona Cotton in black and white and Aurifil thread. Though, in the end the Kona Cotton will not be what I choose to work with for my "real Quilt". It was just not CHANELized enough.

Here are some pictures from my work in progress during Marti’s course.

 

 

Lots and lots of pieces, mostly “melons” and little bits. Cutting all the stuff really takes time but Marti's templates where really good to cut with. A single Weeding Ring block has a diameter of about 43 cm (17"). The loose paper leaves with the CHANEL logo in the Background host my design ideas and sketches - still in the pre-Moleskine phase then.

Almost everything "on point". I am so proud of it, too bad I am not using it in the end.

 

 

And here I am sewing the "melon" on the single arc. Marti’s funny explanation how to remeber how to sew those two together: always the waist over the hip just like on your body - meaning the cut out part on the curvy respectively the concave on convex part and it works. It is so much easier to sew the pieces together this way. They kind of fit better which should not make a difference but that's one of the quilt mysteries I guess.

See almost the CHANEL Logo -

 

 

et finis - the CC just the way I wanted it...

...all I see is the CHANEL Logo - no Wedding Rings for me.

 

 

 

 

Double Wedding Ring CHANEL Quilt Inspiration

Chanel send me this beautiful inspiration for my Chanel Quilt a few days ago. http://inside.chanel.com/en/the-self-portrait-of-a-perfume
The "line drawing" of the No5 bottle with Coco's face in Red Blackwork will be the perfect accent for one of the white "tiles" of my Quilt.

Not in Red and White - The CHANEL Quilt Project 2016

 

If you take a closer look at a Double Wedding Ring Quilt you will have to notice that it is Coco Chanel's interwoven Double-C-Logo in disguise. I love Chanel No. 5, the black & white packaging design for their cosmetics and perfumes are beautiful and I have been toying with making myself a Chanel Quilt for many years now.

 

This year’s theme for our quilt group’s exhibition is pretty open “the quilt you always wanted to make...”. So mine will be my Double Wedding Ring CHANEL Quilt.