Cherry Sunset

Cherry Sunset is in the current issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting. I love this quilt. I designed it several years ago and have been wanting to make it ever since, but until it was commissioned, it never moved up my priority list.

I decided to increase the size of the blocks and add a couple of extra borders to make it a single bed size, but otherwise I kept my original design.

It's all made from one block - Kaleidoscope. But instead of colouring all the blocks the same, I treated the layout as simply a collection of pieces and selected colours/fabrics for the pieces on an individual basis (though obviously with symmetry in mind).

 

I spent ages trying to find suitable fabrics; the burgundy being the main challenge. In the end I decided to paint my own, which I wrote about when I was doing it here. I love the results.

I quilted feather designs in some of the spaces, such as the circular one in the centre, which I extended to fill the four points (above).

The 'background' spaces are filled with the swirl design I've been so fond of recently, using threads to match the fabrics (though I did use the same blue thread on both the lighter blues and the aqua sections).

I also used feathers in the sections of sand along the side, and to emphasise the major burgundy diamond shape. For the latter, I treated the inside edge of the diamond as the spine and quilted a continuous single-sided feather.

 

Borders tend to  be my biggest challenge when it comes to designing quilting (and given I don't especially enjoy sewing them on, perhaps I should stop designing so many quilts with multiple borders - but while designing I rarely let practicalities intervene!). I quilted all the borders in the ditch, then used a feather variation on the wide burgundy border and continuous swirls in alternating directions on the sand border.

Now I'll get back to procrastinating... I don't have any urgent deadlines just now, so it's a toss-up between starting to convert my drafts for Eleanor's quilt into a usable pattern (pros: I really am excited about the design, and it's way overdue; cons: I'm not confident the fabric painting required will turn out as I envisage and I want to sew, but there's lots of work before I get to that) or starting another quilt which I want to get out of the way (pros: its easy and when done will allow me to get seven quilts out of the house; con: Eleanor's quilt beckons).