Friday, May 27, 2011

Spiralling

Two months ago, The American Folk Art Museum held the "Infinite Variety" quilt show in New York for 4 days. Sadly, I did not get a chance to see it in person, but the pictures that were popping up all over the place were inspiring. I was especially intrigued by this one - the optical illusion effect, the simplicity of the design, the whole thing! I HAD TO FIGURE IT OUT.

So when I'm still thinking about it two months later? Yeah, that's a sign that I have to make it. I got out my handy protractor and started to chart the whole thing - I planned on using this lovely pile of colors that I picked up with Kelly in January:
Possibilities

We got a 1/2 yard of each of those 12 Kona Solids - the idea was to make a quilt using those solids and white. I had no ideas.

But then it all started to come together! There was some tweaking, some long division, some cursing, but with much perseverance......
Getting There!

And then the tough part, getting it ALL together.......
Top Spiral

It's GIGANTIC! It's about 78" or so across. The center seams are incredibly, um, unseemly - there are 48 seams all converging on one point, making for a LOT of bulk, and a bit of a mess. I appliqued a little quarter-sized circle over the whole mess, and I think it's fine. But the center circles are still all quite thick - it's 3-4 fabric thicknesses for the center foot or so. I'm sure the quilting will be a BEAST - I'll be hand quilting this, as it's just too big to think about running through a machine, and it will gain me a bit more control over the lines and colors. Hoping to begin to tackle the quilting this weekend!

8 comments:

  1. HOLY CRAP!! Woman, you amaze me with everything you do.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! Beautiful! You are very clever to have figured that out. The colours are gorgeous and the quilt is mesmerizing. Really looking forward to seeing it quilted!

    ReplyDelete
  3. that is amazing and so beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jesus Murphy. You are amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is the most amazing thing I have seen in ages! I discovered you through your photo submission on the Flickr group Fresh Modern Quilts. Would you consider posting some more information/instructions about how you came up with the pattern? (or do you have any shots of putting this together?) This is both visually stunning and intellectually brain-teasing. I love it!! Thank you so much for sharing, I can't wait to see how the quilting transforms it further.... clicking Subscribe right this instant :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Utterly crazily wonderful. (I wanted to say amazing but all the other commenters beat me to it, and in the face of such creativity I couldn't just repeat them).

    ReplyDelete
  7. Every time I look at this, I fall in love with it all over again. You are amazing!

    ReplyDelete