Oak Leaf and Swirl – Part 1

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have a quilt hanging in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah! Praise the Lord!

During Spring Quilt Week the museum held a “Meet the Artist” event and eight of us were there. As an unexpected bonus to all that fun, each artist was asked to do a short interview about their quilt, and I now have the link to those interviews. To view the videos click here!

I hope you find them as interesting as I did :-)!

When I enter a contest such as this, I not only enjoy creating something according to the contest rules, but I love to challenge myself to try things I haven’t done before. This quilt was no exception.

I began with an idea I’ve heard about, but never tried – quilting the background first and then adding the appliqué. I knew I wanted to achieve a trapunto look in the unquilted areas, so I used a double layer of batting: an 80/20 cotton first, with a washable wool on top. The fabric was a beautiful silk/cotton blend called Radiance. I only had a yard and they no longer make this fabric. Since the minimum size for the contest is 50″ x 50″, I knew this wasn’t going to be big enough, but I tend to worry about things like that later.

I came up with a basic pattern using a windblown tree I’ve played with in other quilts, adding copyright free leaves from the internet, and a twisted traditional oak leaf and reel block I created for the central design (more about that later).

I marked the areas where I wanted to place these motifs, and then quilted around those areas to mark them.

From there I added large spirals to mimic the wind (plus a little bit of stippling around the central image to see how the faux trapunto was going to look):

Once the swirls were done, more stippling and mini-spiraling could commence:

and more:

Until the quilting was completed:

You may have noticed I added a bit of matchstick quilting along the top and right edges. I like the way the curvy and linear designs play together:

The oak leaves were made from men’s silk necktie fabric. Each one was made by sewing 2 pieces of the same tie fabric, right sides together, in the shape of a leaf; then turning this piece right sides out and stitching it to the quilt along the vein line:

The tree was done using a technique I call raw edge repliqué. I used the same technique for the blocks in the border on the left, but this post is getting a bit long, so I’ll save that information for next week’s post.

Have you ever quilted the background first and then added the appliqué?

Did you enjoy the process? I really did and I hope to play with it more in the future :-)!