Chasing The Light

I've been busy stitching to meet an end of October deadline, but I am delighted to say I've finished the first in a series of quilts inspired by our trip to northern Spain this summer.

I spent much of our time there snapping photos of light and shadow and seeing quilts in the images I had on my phone, and the sketches I made in my sketchbook.

One afternoon. sitting under a poolside-parasol, I noticed the dappled light, playing across the sunlounger. I grabbed my sketchbook and started to trace the dapples, noticing the movement and layering I was achieveing, just with a simple line drawing.

But how to translate into a quilt?

I liked the idea of a monochrome quilt so I scoured the charity shops for a black linen garment to use as a ground. Luckily, I found a pair of quality linen trousers, which I took apart with the seam ripper, and pieced to form a single piece of fabric, approximately 1m square. I liked the idea of leaving the edges as they were, rather than squaring them off, and making a feature of the pocket slits etc, to draw attention to the fact this is a repurposed fabric (the constant nagging from the 'industry' to use new, 'proper' quilting fabrics is jarring).

Once pieced, I needle-turn appliqued the white dots, before fusing, and stitching the organza.

I hand quilted in rows with a 1/2" gap, stopping and starting again when I came to a 'dapple', and bound with a 1/4" binding.

I'm really pleased with how this has turned out and am looking forward to making more light/shade quilts.