Proof of Concept and more Shadow Trapunto

I'm home sick today- I've had a cold all week, first a sore throat, then a runny/congested nose, and last night a terrible cough.  I guess I should be happy I only get one symptom at a time more or less (still a bit of a runny nose, but not as much).  I stayed home today and am mostly just sleeping. I walked up a flight of stairs and felt like I had run a marathon. I should go back to bed.

But first, let me share what I've been working on for the past few weeks.

The main project I've been working on is a proof of concept for the next show quilt I want to do- I wanted to see if the idea I had has enough interest and visual impact to invest the time to make it into a 50" square quilt (this is a 16" square...)  This was done very quickly, when I make the real thing the letters will be stenciled nicely- this I just wrote them with chalk and outlined them!  The threads aren't the actual colors either- they are what I had on hand that best matched RGB and CMY.    It probably isn't ribbon worthy, but I like the idea, and it will give me the opportunity to do a lot of quilting.  (For those who see black on black, go ahead and get your comments in, that way the I told you so's have more ring later.)

 

Only about half the checkerboard actually got quilted. I like the idea for the background, but plan to put it on point.  I will also do the words in trapunto.  I think a large quilt with that much background will be boring, so I think I am going to hide motifs in it- a spiral, a feather, a maze. I'm not sure.  I need to play with how to do that. It will all get quilted black on black.

Although I am very proud with how good the feathers look (yay me!) I've decided they won't actually work.  On a large quilt, I'd have to make the feathers larger, and then they wouldn't have the right scale to the rest of the quilting (already the feathers are very open).  I suppose I could hyper quilt to fill inside of them, but I think I will have to come up with something else instead.  I love the silver metallic, but the idea of putting it into the black field was shot down- many people thought it would distract from the center design.  What about black metallic for some feathers in the background?

 A woman at my guild has also told me I should make the quilt round... I'm not sure. I will have to try some bias binding and see how it goes.  One thing this tiny quilt taught me is that it is really hard to square up a heavily quilted design and keep corners even. So I think I might leave the idea of anything near the edges out. So I think I might need a second round of proof of concept- maybe a 24" square, to try the motifs in the background....

Second, this is Leah Day's Feather and Hearts wholecloth. I've quilted it before, but this time I decided to do it as Shadow Trapunto. 

 

I wanted a thread other than white, but apparently the white blue doesn't show up on the green fabric.  Oh well... At least the fabric shows nicely- I dyed it myself.

 I am likely going to teach micro-quilting to my guild next year, and I think I may do it on this quilt. (I might need to get Kevin to learn to quilt so I can practice teaching it. I mean, can't you just say "do what you normally do, but do it smaller." haha)