Weave - the Story of a Finish

About seven or eight years ago (maybe even nine...) I was given some Oakshott fabrics. There were two bundles, similar to the Lakes and Ruby Reds fat eighths bundles that are on sale on the Oakshott website these days, though it has been too long ago to remember whether they were exactly the same.

For a long while, I was stumped for ideas of what to make with these gorgeous fabrics. If you have ever seen them, and better still, handled them, you will know what I am talking about! These fabrics are shot cottons, and they have a lustre to them which comes from the different threads that are used for the warp and weft in the weaving process. They are also soft and drapey (is that a word?), which gives them a quality all their own.

In short, I wanted a SPECIAL project to use them in.

In 2010 I started working on it. Getting my inspiration from the quality of the fabrics themselves, I decided to focus on the theme of weaving, and played with my (then) EQ6. In the end I settled on a design reminiscent of a tartan:

The design was slightly adapted from my original plan due to the size limitations of the fat eighths, but I did not want to join pieces for the large purple square in the top right, so when I was at the Festival of Quilts that year I acquired a larger piece of the purple (and some other colours, too, of course). The hand of this piece was slightly different (I think they changed their manufacturer in the mean time), but the colours and lustre were exactly the same. Perfect!

I did not have any off-white Oakshott. I don't remember why, it may well be that the Oakshott range didn't include a suitable colour at the time. Anyway, I added a cream/white batik fabric to the mix for the "white" pieces, and that worked fine, too.

In March 2011 I started cutting, laying out the pieces carefully on my design wall (I have no such thing nor space for it) a piece of fabric on the floor. Deciding where each colour needed to go was hard, especially since I had limited amounts of each colour, but I did get there:

Sewing it all together wasn't too hard, though it required a clear head to keep the pieces in their correct order. But straight seams all the way, nesting the seams, iron at the ready - no problem.

Layering the quilt sandwich some time later, I started quilting. The quilt isn't huge, so I decided to hand quilt it, using quilting thread in pink, purple and wine to coordinate with the fabrics. I decided to want to emphasise the "weave" effect with my quilting, so I alternated the direction of my quilting lines in each fabric piece. I used straight lines and wavy ones for some playfulness, and for the lovely effect these quilting lines created on the shot cottons:

And then I became stuck!

The quilting took longer than imagined... There were sooo many threads to bury... There were other, newer projects on the horizon (yay)! I S.T.O.P.P.E.D.

Enter the Finishalong! In January 2016 I first decided to join in with the Finishalong, and this was on my list. And it remained on my list.
But I did get some little quilting done every quarter, until at the start of this quarter I realised there wasn't all that much more quilting required! Suddenly I was on a roll, and hey presto, it got DONE.

All quilting done, all threads tied off (how I dislike that part!), and binding in place. I used a faced binding for this one, because I did not want the binding to "frame" the weave effect. And I even wrote a tutorial for the Faced Binding:

So here it is:

Stats:

Name: Weave
Design: my own
Size: 48" x 48"
Fabrics: Oakshott cottons, off-white batik, patchwork print cotton (backing)
Pieced by machine, quilted by hand
Faced binding

Linking up at the 2017 Finishalong (listed on my Quarter 1 Finishalong list at number 2)

Sandra