I am falling more and more in love with any type of hand work and needle work. It’s so relaxing to be able to sit on the couch or in bed with a hand work project. The first session of our Whole Cloth Quilt class was in November and with the holiday rush, I didn’t completely finish my quilt until just the other day. I only had ten more stitches to do.
Whole Cloth Quilts are traditionally done as wedding quilts. There is no patchwork, like a traditional quilt, rather the design is created though elaborate hand quilting designs. In the class, Carolanne teaches a variety of ways to approach this concept to make something quite traditional or more modern. Each student gets to design their project entirely, so the possibiltiies are quite endless!
For my quilt, I wanted to use a map for my design. After searching around on the internet, I found an awesome vintage New York City subway map. To keep the project manageable, I decided to make this quilt a wall hanging and I’m going to hang it up on a 12″ quilting hoop on the wall. I used my Valdani variegated thread in four colours to represent the outline of the island and boroughs of New York and then the three distinct colours used for the subway lines. I’m so happy with how this turned out. I am already in love with hand quilting, but creating a project that completely features it was super fun. I think I might try doing a whole series of whole cloth quilt maps.
The rest of the class chose to do a variety of projects from baby quilt, lap-sized quilt, pillows, tote bag and table runner. Their work was all so different and amazing. What I especially love about our hand work classes is that they have a great social, ‘quilting bee’ feel, since we are all sitting together for the entire class, chit chatting and drinking tea. It’s so relaxing! Our next session is starting up next week, so I’m excited to see what new whole cloth quilts are going to emerge.
