Friday, January 25, 2013

"Birds in Air" a small quilted throw

Birds in Air completely quilted and bound waiting for a wash and label
One last step, a label, to complete my Birds in Air throw quilt for the Madrone Road Fabric Challenge. The rules were simple, make a quilted project of any size or shape using the fabrics given out at DC Modern Quilt Guild meeting in December 2012 and any solid color fabrics. The challenge winners get your quilt project included in Madrone Road Fabrics booth in the Modern Quilters Conference  Feb. 2013. These have to be completed and photographs entered in a Flickr. group for judging by Jan. 31st. I will load my completed quilt tonight on the finished project Flickr.com group follow the link to see some of the many other projects entered in the contest.
Birds in Air photo from a book that inspired me to use this design for Madrone Road Challenge
This quilt top, is inspired by an antique quilt in one of my books from 1880. Since the challenge gave us so little material I decided small triangles of printed fabric mixed with white background would be a light and bight way to spread out the precious Madrone Road cotton fabrics. Planning was tough for me because of the math. I didn't know how big it would end up being and in the end I used two different sizes of triangle squares to us as much of the fabric as possible. The problem became how many flocks of birds would fit together to make a nice size quilt top. The original antique had big flocks of many birds and was a full bed sized quilt. With the little bit of fabric I had I could have made one big bird flock block but that didn't appeal to me when I considered the possible layouts.

First set of triangle squares were all 3 inch and fit together this way.

second set of large and small bird flocks laid out with solid candy blue Kona backing fabric
 Eventually I landed on adding smaller blocks down one side and the biggest squares were reduced to only 4 squares per set. This layout gave my project a nice spread enough to be a small throw.

swatches of Madrone Road and white background (sky) muslin

working on the embroidery label
finished label on the back 

crinkles after cold wash and a few minutes in a dryer

full front view of quilted throw "Birds in Air" 31 x 58 inches 







7 comments:

quirky granola girl said...

your finished quilt is lovely. and you are so good to make your label right away. i'm terrible at remembering to label my quilts and i usually end up getting out the marker.
wishing you well,
melinda

Selfsewn said...

oh I love it and the label is gorgeous!!
Happy Weekend x

Katie @SwimBikeQuilt said...

Frederick!!! What a wonderful quilt! (can you tell that i really, really like this one?)

Anjeanette said...

Oh Frederick! I love your finished quilt. I confess that my favorite part is your label. Such a sweet finish!

Anonymous said...

I adore the hand embroidered label. What a great touch! It's a great quilt.

DC Modern Quilt Guild said...

That antique quilt is very inspiring! I am in love with the design possibilities of half-square triangles right now!
I think all the white you added makes a very nice composition!

Frederick Nunley said...

Thanks everyone for your great feedback on the Birds in Air project. It's so encouraging to see that the project worked in your eyes. Happy Quilting!