
The other day I was cleaning! Yes, I do that occasionally, but not often enough. Anyway, I found this…my original design for Canterbury Knight. This quilt will be on display at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival from 25-28 February and I’ll be down there hanging around it from time to time on the 26th and 27th. Oh my golly! That’s just a week and a half away!
Sew this is how I usually design a quilt. I start with a concept that drops into my head. in order not to lose the idea, I often make this kind of silly quick sketch with just a few notes. Then I go to my computer where I have several pieces of design software and work the concept into a full design. I used to do this on paper with pencil, so if you don’t have design software, you can still do this yourself. Here are a few of the many many files I have in my steps toward the full design.
One of the original 12th century drawings of Chaucer’s knight. I only kept the concept for the horse’s armor.
My horse drawing all painted and ready to print onto the silk fabric. This horse took me days to draw and paint using my design software. I need to get faster.
I draw the pattern for the appliques and place them so I can see they work right. I hand painted the knight’s head and hand, the rest is applique made from metallic-like fabrics.
I do a lot of research for some of my quilts, such as these ancient manuscript quilts. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to find what I want in Dover publications. Sometimes, I have them hanging around my house (my late husband was a magnificent librarian and book collector and I have a lot of his collection). Sometimes I have to go elsewhere (always being conscious of copyright issues). In this case, I found the border in two different sources–Dover Illuminated Manuscripts and a book my husband had of ancient illuminated manuscripts. it’s quite similar, but I made a lot of changes too. Afterall, I am not trying to reproduce the ancient manuscript, but am making an ancient manuscript “inspired” 21st century piece of art. This gives me the option to change things I don’t like or want to make. In this case, I kept fairly close to the original.
The original border jpg.
I changed the announcer boy a lot, removed some of the busy-ness, adjusted for size, and changed the background to black. Then I took the designer boy, the “angry bird” on the left and the two big flowers and turned them into appliques that I hand inked onto silk. The rest I traced onto my black border, quilted, and then painted it. I digitized the verse in Bernina V7 software, and found birds to add around the text box. I also added the little upper right box to balance the letter “A”. Eventually, one piece at a time, I arrive at the full design so I can begin making the appliques and quilt top. I use Corel Draw to turn this into a full sized print out. Corel Draw easily tiles the print into whatever sized paper that will fit through my printer. In this case I used tabloid sized paper (11 x 17) to minimize the number of tiles. I then tape them together. Getting to this point is about one-third of the time it takes me to make a quilt.
This is the design file I worked with and enlarged to full size.
And after a lot of fun and interesting work, I ended up with this quilt:
I started this quilt in December 2014 and “completed” it in March 2015 in full-time work. After it went to The HMQS and I got back some helpful criticism from the excellent 2 judges, I did a fair amount of revamping and correcting. In fact, this quilt has had something “fixed” on it after every show. I even darkened and re-inked some of the colors that you see in this photo before sending it to the Mid-Atlantic to help overcome the judges viewpoints that the border overwhelmed the central theme. I do note though, that ancient manuscript borders often “overwhelm” the central theme, if you look at it that way. Anyway, a quilt is never done until it’s done. And I learn something with every quilt and every show.
So if you are going to MAQF this year, drop by and see this quilt. I also have “Kanazawa Memories” in the show that I’d like you to see, but that’s another design story altogether. I may be there by one or the other on Friday or Saturday and I’d love to see you. Make sure to tell me who you are.
Sew happy everyone! Design your own piece of art…start simple and go forward from there. Make changes as desired.
Note: I have added a “Donate” button that goes safely through Pay Pal. I do not want anyone to feel they must donate, nor guilt trip anyone. I note I am a struggling artist, and I thought you may want to drop an artistic donation in for fun and to help keep the blog running. PLEASE, continue to read and comment if you don’t wish to donate and DO NOT feel guilty if you don’t. I really struggled with myself trying to decide to add the donate button. But in the end, decided to try it. Cheers.