Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Chinese Lanterns

Chinese Lanterns


A few years ago I began working on a series of long and narrow quilts. The first was the Lamb Cottage quilt which I discussed in my last blog post. This one is based on a photograph of Chinese lanterns that my husband took. The applique is done, but I'm still working on the quilting. Notice I have the same foundation pieced border that I used in the Lamb Cottage quilt. When piecing the flowers themselves, I used different shades of orange hand-dyed fabric.
To construct the quilt, I pieced the entire background first so that there would be a base on which to applique. It's difficult to tell in the picture, but there are stepping stones in the background. It's a lot of work that isn't obvious, but I like the effect of the complex background with the bright leaves and flowers in front.
For the leaves, I used different batiks as they were and didn't have to do any coloring or painting. I washed paint on some of the fence fabric to make some pieces darker than others.

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Lamb Cottage

Lamb Cottage


A few years ago I decided to make some quilts that were long and narrow since I have some wall space that can only accommodate narrower quilts. The first of these quilts is my Lamb Cottage quilt. I based the design on a combination of photos that my husband and I took while in England. The lamb was from North Yorkshire, the cottage from southern England.
I decided that I wanted to have a unifying border with these quilts so that they could be hung together. I designed this paper pieced lattice border which uses leafy fabric and wood grain fabric and gives the appearance of the leafy fabric behind the wood.
For the main part of the quilt, the sky fabric had a print of the distant trees so that didn't have to be pieced. For the chimneys I used a brick print, and the flowers in the flower beds were fussy cut from a floral fabric. The hedge was from two shades of the same green print. For the grass, I cut sections from a grass fabric and pieced them together so it would look like the natural ridges seen in grass. The lamb is pieced from a range of taupe shades.
There is a pattern for this quilt available on my website at susantaylorpropst.com.