06 June, 2016

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.


 
 

 
 

05 June, 2016

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.
 
 
 
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.
 
 
 

 

04 June, 2016

Double Wedding Ring CHANEL Quilt Inspiration



http://inside.chanel.com/en/the-self-portrait-of-a-perfume


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.