Dilys The Quilt: BLOG 168

ASIDE: My mother seems to be making yet another of her miraculous recoveries, so much so that we are calling her Doris Mandela!! Although she is not out of hospital yet, she is determined to get back home and is working on her mobility with the hospital staff. I feel as if she is taking four steps away from us but only three back each time she has these medical emergencies. That said, I greatly admire her tenacity and I am banking on the inherited genes!

During these fraught few weeks, I have immersed myself in colour and fabric as a way of coping. As usual with my own work, I have a vague idea of how I am going to start but I have no idea where it will lead me and how it will end. I just let the fabrics talk to me.

I prepare my fabrics, preferring the close weave of multi-coloured Batiks and Bali’s, with a fusible backing (Bondaweb is my preference) and use them like a paint palette. My work area consists of a flat ironing surface covered with the release paper removed from the fusible web. I cut random strips of fused fabrics using a rotary cutter and a pinked blade.

Work area

I prepare squares from the fused fabric, where the strips are placed on the diagonal and over-lapped slightly so that they stick to each other when ironed. On the design wall, which is essential for this process, I over-lap and fuse these squares together to create larger squares. The square on the design wall below measures 18” with a 6” squares missing from the centre. (ASIDE: The first square I made like this was put forward as one of the ideas for our group quilt project but it was rejected. It seems too good an idea to drop so I am developing it myself.)

Design wall

The concept is to create a wash of colour going across the whole quilt, so that the colours of one square and one block seep into the colours of another. I liken the process to doing a jigsaw, where you have to find the right strip of fabric for the right place. The process isn’t easy and it requires a lot of prepared fabric strips for ease of creativity.

More blocks

Before I fuse a fabric, I pin it onto the design wall and audition it for colour and tone. Taking a photograph helps to distance you from your work so that you can view the blocks as a whole and therefore make better colour choices.

Blocks and fabric

The preparation goes hand in hand with ironing. Once I have selected my palette of fabric, I stick them, RS up, onto the glue side of the fusible web, over-lapping them slightly so that no fusible gets onto the iron.

Fusible web

Completed sheet

I spend a lot of time ironing on the paper side to make sure that the fusible is transferred onto the fabric. I pay particular attention to the edges of the paper.

Iron to the edge

Allow the fabrics to cool and only then start to remove the release paper from the fabric. This paper makes an excellent surface for sticking over-lapping shapes, so remove it carefully so you can re-use it. I slide my hand between the layers initially and work across from edge to edge.