Wholecloth???!

I was inspired by this quilt by Ferret I stumbled across by accident last week to have a go at a wholecloth. I love the idea of using white thread to draw on a black background, and of course being me, it had to be a snowflake. But as I started to draft the crystal, somehow my hand kept wanting to draw feathers. So I abandoned the straight-lines and points ideas, since the size I had in mind (around 20in square) wasn't going to leave much space to create the design with fillers anyway, and drew a feathered snowflake.

I thought tracing the design onto black fabric was going to present a problem, but a little creativity solved it effectively. My makeshift light-box consisted of my bendable halogen clipped to the table and turned upside-down, my 12.5in ruler, and eight tupperware cups held in place with double-sided tape. I also hold the pattern in place on the ruler and the fabric on both with a few pieces of double-sided tape. It worked a treat! Although with black fabric, make sure the lines on your pattern are quite dark - the heavy pencil lines were just ok, but the lighter ones too hard to see easily, so I went over them with a sharpie.

The ruler did get pretty warm though, so if you do this, I'd recommend turning off the light regularly - such as whenever you reposition the fabric. I traced with a clover white marker. Initially it looks as though its left no mark, but after a few seconds it shows up beautifully with just a single stroke. It comes out well with either water spray or ironing.

I stitched the snowflake outline with white Gutermann cotton, then experimented with fill options. I tried a few colours and threads and designs. The image below doesn't show it too well, but the top and bottom ones use a royal blue. The middle is a black and white variegated King Tut, but it wasn't the right place for it.

I ended up using royal blue Bottom Line thread, with a different colour (dark teal) in the bobbin. After I'd done the large feathers, I decided it'd be fun to turn it over and do the smaller ones from the back and have both colours showing. This is what I originally planned as the front:

Both sides look the same apart from the colour-swap, and now I can't decided which should be the front? Or whether I should make it double-sided. Apart from the label, that would be easy enough. But I can't decide between the binding fabrics; one works better with the blue and one with the teal. What do you think? This was originally going to be the back:

The charcoal looks a lot better in person than it does here. (ETA, I've sewn on the charcoal).

These are the two sides together for contrast:

Next time (there will be a next time) I'll fill the background with small swirls or something similar, not repeated echoing. I'm not entirely decided on this quilt's destination.

I'd also appreicate any tips for labelling a black double-sided quilt! My usual method would stick out a mile!