It's OK to PLay

My time in Key West has been spent working with silk dupioni. I am developing a new talk to present to quilt guilds and I like to show a big assortment of quilts. I brought all of my silk in a big tub with us.  I brought very little other fabric - although there is a lovely quilt shop on the island in case of an emergency!

 The question arises, what to do with the scraps that are generated from all the quilt making. 

I love perusing the internet, especially Pinterest when looking for an idea.  I eventually narrowed my search to string quilts.  I had lots of strips that I could use and chose to stay in as neutral palette - at least my neutral palette. My neutral palette includes oranges and rusts.

 

Since dupioni is such a coarse weave I always back it with something.  This time I used a light fusible interfacing, but instead of stabilizing all the little strips with it, I used it as a foundation.  After I sewed each strip, I flipped it open and pressed it.  I made most of the units to measure approximately 7" wide x 9" long. 

 After a lot of sewing I started running out of strips, so I sewed 2 or more together.

I really liked how these pieced strips looked when added into the block.

As I was making the blocks, I thought about various arrangements for them .  I had a few in mind.  But I like to work what I call organically, or in other words flying by the seat of my pants, and wasn't quite sure what the final arrangement would be.  It's good to be flexible when creating a quilt. 

 You just never know where it will take you.

 

I have a design wall set up. Please excuse the colors of the photos.  There isn't very good lighting.

This was the first setting I was thinking about.  I placed strips of the blocks, strata, on black silk dupioni.  My plan was then to add silk circles to the black strips.

It was OK.

Next, I tried an offset arrangement, reminding me a bit of a rail fence.

 The next try was just using the blocks without the black silk.  I liked this better.

 

But what would happened if I rotated it so the individual strips were horizontal?

I was surprised, but this was my favorite.

It's a very nice contemporary piece that works thanks to the palette and the variation in strip widths.  The places where the strips are pieced add a lot of interest and serve as a sort of jolt as your eyes wander around. 

But now I had to add my own touch to the quilt via a couple of borders. 

 This is what I think is very interesting.  When the quilt is in what I call the horizontal orientation, I like black borders.\

But when I rotate it so that the quilt is in the vertical orientation, I like the light borders.

I'm not sure yet what I will put in the borders.  My first thought is my beloved circles, but I will leave the quilt on my design wall and let the whole idea marinate for now. 

 

And if you were wondering what the back looked like with the fusible foundation, this is it.

 

And close-up.