Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Work in Progress Wednesday

(clickable for a larger view)


I've been collecting silk dupioni and asian brocades for a while to make a quilt I saw on the cover of a New Zealand quilt magazine. I even marked and cut out a good deal of the quilt and pieced the first block. At that point I decided it wasn't going to work out the way I wanted so I put it all aside.

Recently I came across the foundations to make a NY Beauty that I'd ordered some time ago from equilter.com and decided that I might like to use my silk fabrics for that. (the foundations are muslin not paper)

The block size is 8" and I decided to also add some 4" blocks that I drafted on muslin from a pattern I got in Valori Wells' book "Radiant New York Beauties."

While I had already backed the silk fabrics with a soft fusible interfacing type fabric (to lessen the fraying) working on the muslin foundations gives it added stability. I quite like how it's turning out and am having fun putting the blocks together. Right now the blocks aren't arranged in any kind of order - just pinned on the wall as I complete them (well, that 4" block in the middle isn't quite complete - it still needs to be sewn together). I'm looking forward to finishing all the blocks and then playing with the layout.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is going to be a beautiful quilt - I just love silk fabrics!

Anonymous said...

The blocks look wonderful. The silk will give the quilt such shimmer and movement, I bet. I actually have a fair number of silks in my stash, but I am afraid to work with them -- my one attempt (without stablizer!) did not come out well. With stablizer and foundations, I would think they are much easier to work with.

Anonymous said...

It is going to be lovely. Nice start!

Anonymous said...

oooh, silk! I think this will be a stunning quilt. I would never have thought to use silk - but isn't it just perfect? Beautiful!

Anonymous said...

Hey my friend! Nice to see that someone is getting something up on their design board...extremely impressive...I want to grow up and be a quilter just like you! Im working on it! Love c

becky said...

Beautiful. You have me tempted to get out silks & play. Many of mine are neck ties & so are on the bias & even more temperamental. (Must finish current projects, must finish current projects,must finish current projects, must finish current projects, must at least finish the current comissioned piece...)

Anonymous said...

What kind of stabilizer are you using? I have a collection of dupioni silks as well. I was planning on dong a kind of 4patch in a square with them. I could do it really fast, if I would iron all the stabilizer on to the fabric. Yours is very appealing. Nice work!!

Anonymous said...

this is going to be smashing, Corky. i have a large collection of dupioni silks that i'm afraid to dig into and do anything with although you've beat me to the punch with the New York Beauty pattern :-).

i, too, am curious about what kind of stabalizer you're using on your silks.