You Can Find Inspiration, Even In A Deli

Ideas for quilts can come from many places.  I went out to lunch the other day with my husband to a local deli and was mesmerized by the fabric on the benches.  During the entire meal I kept thinking about what a fun quilt this would be to create.

I have been further exploring dupioni silk this summer and decided to use it for this project.For piecing the silk needs to be stabilized.  I like to do this with either a woven or tricot fusible interfacing.  The interfacing needs to be applied with a damp press cloth.

 

For fusible applique, some fraying of the silk occurs when using the interfacing. 

 Because the dupioni is so coarsely woven, some fraying will always occur,

 but using only fusible web lessens the amount of fraying.

This is the piece on my design wall before I stitched it and added the circles.  

 I had doubts about the design and thought about putting it away. 

 But I decided to keep going.

The blanket stitching and the many colored circles made a huge difference.

I used a rayon thread to do the blanket stitching.

I handstiitched the circles down and quilted a swirl inside it.

I am still working on a name for it.  I was watching the Tour de France while I was quilting it.  Stitching around the circles, made me think about when the cyclists split and  ride around the roundabouts.  It also made me think about how the cyclists ride behind each other in the slipstream for decreased wind resistance. But I'm not enthralled with using those ideas for names.

Any ideas?