Tulip Chain Quilt
It's been a while, my quilt productivity has definitely been hurt during the stay at home order, which is finally lifting, but I finished a quilt. My Tulip Chain quilt is a for fun project with a bit of a secret, nope I can share the secret quite yet. I love the bright color palette and the versatile shape.
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| Tulip Chain quilt by Heather Black |
When I started designing this quilt I was thinking of tulip fields and the rainbow of colors that tulips come in but discovered, fairly quickly, that the shape takes can be representative of many things. I've had people tell me that they look like tulips, cats, mixing bowls, fruit and Star Wars Storm Troopers. I love that with a little tweaking of the color palette this quilt can change into the makers own vision.
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| Tulip Blocks |
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| Tulip Chain quilting |
I used vertical lines broken up by long rectangles to create the falling down movement. This took forever, I estimate forever to be 8-9 hours just to quilt the background. Once I settled on the quilting designs for the tulips they went much faster about 5-6 hours for all three columns. I took a picture of my computer screen when I was all finished quilting so you can see all the quilting in more detail.
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| Tulip Chain - digital quilting |
I really like how this quilt turned out and I'm definitely entering this one in QuiltCon. QuiltCon is going virtual this for 2021 so I'm a little disappoint that I won't have the opportunity to see so many of my quilty friends in person come February. I also took the time to glue down my seems as I pressed them open to avoid shadowing and to keep them from flipping so most of that work will go unnoticed with a virtual judging but at least I know it's there.
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| Tulip Chain quilt by Heather Black |
One more thing, my English Springer Spaniel, Anne, decided that she wanted to join the photo shoot and laid down right next to the quilt stand. Anne's almost 13 years old so I didn't have the heart to make her move. She's getting to be an old girl and has been through many life changing events with me. Several years back I did a pixel quilt of Anne, here.
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| Anne |
I hope everyone is staying safe and enjoying Spring as much as possible before Summer is upon us, Summer is my least favorite season... it's too HOT.
"For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words." 1 Corinthians 2:11-13
It's really beautiful, fresh and bright. I love it, and hope it does well at Quiltcon. Something tells me that next February the judges might be looking for just that after Covid and this incredible year of human struggles !
ReplyDeleteThank you Vivian! I hope it does well too but we'll see. You never know what the judges are looking for. I do like the bright cheery colors.
DeleteAnother awesome quilt! I love this one so much.
ReplyDeleteThank Danice!!
DeleteThis is a lovely quilt, Heather! As usual, you've captured simple, graphic shapes, and elevated them with scale, and your inerrant ability to choose colors. I admire your work so much... however, I had to giggle when you explained that quilting the background took "forever," and that was 8-9 hours. :-) It's relative, isn't it? My latest quilting effort took approximately 92 hours. That was over the course of several months of sitting at my domestic machine. I know because I tracked how long each four-inch block took to quilt. Best wishes with this "Tulip Chain" QC entry. The 2021 show is gonna look a whole lot different than it has in the past. I know the QC team is trying to keep the energy up for a virtual event, but I can't help feeling it won't be the same.
ReplyDeleteIt won't but maybe it will be the start of a combined traditional and virtual show. Maybe 20% virtual and 80% traditional I know people unable to attend would love that. They could have online faculty and show faculty. It will be interesting to see how the virtual show goes I'm sure the MQG will do their best to make it great but yeah it won't be the same.
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