Glow Part 3

I'm back safe and sound after a lovely two week holiday touring up the West Coast seeing beautiful flowers in Namaqualand and visiting areas in the Northern Cape for the first time.   What a diverse and beautiful country we live in....

Well, back to Glow.   At the stage where I stopped my story last time, I had beaded the tiles on the sides, the top strip as well as the semi rounded section at the top of the quilt...    Such diverse elements each on its own - I had to find a way to create unity between this lot otherwise all the hard work would have been in vain...

My initial idea was to make fabric beads to hang at the bottom as a fringe, also to hang a combination of fabric beads and patterned circles  from the side panel tiles....     I however realized that I had to complete embellishing the centre panel first as that would dictate the embellishment and mood of the rest of the quilt.   As I only used Lutradur in the top section of the quilt, I needed to repeat it in some other place.   I had prepared a round piece of Lutradur when I iniatially prepared the pieces - it was so delicate and lacy and perfect in the end.    I also felt that I needed to use the reddish purple centre panel as a backdrop for another element...     I prepared a square piece of light purple silk and stitched the round piece of Lutradur to it and embellished it in the same way as the top section.   Repeating the colours and techniques with these two sections created the desired unity.   This square placed on point was hung from the top section with 5 beaded cords running through the piece and lying loose on the reddish purple background of the centre panel.

Glow - embellished Lutradur section hanging from the top section lying loose on the centre panel.

I also prepared two round cut out patterns in different sizes and finished it off similar to the tiles on the side panels and hung it from 3 beaded cords from the square on point.    The colours, embellishing etc did the trick and pulled most of the elements together.   I made various fabric beads and hung it at the bottom of the centre panel, combining the fabric beads with wooden, metal and biggish glass beads.

Glow - Embellished centre panel.

At this stage I felt happy that the top section was not in isolation any more as I managed to repeat some of the materials and techniques in the hanging elements over the centre panel which also softened the strong colour of the centre panel.   The fabric beads at the bottom also balanced the heavy texture at the top of the centre section of the quilt.

Another element which needed to be repeated somewhere was the very structured fabric beads which I placed around the curve on the top section.

Fabric beads around curve of top panel, gold thread wrapped around beads...

I made fabric beads similar to the green ones at the top of the quilt to hang  at the bottom of all the hanging elements - all capped with a brass spacer.   I had this grandiose idea of making all these round shapes to hang from the side tiles with fabric beads and quickly realized something....    I would spoil the quilt by overdoing the hanging elements and I had to stop before the quilt looked like a badly decorated Christmas tree....  At that stage I had stitched various round motifs and already beaded it, ready to be added to the quilt...   Instead, I made inchies and twinchies using silk fabric in the same shades as the small squares of the centre panel and hung it from the tiles, finishing it off with one of the bullet like fabric bead.    Choosing these shades complemented the colour of the centre panel and brought it all together.   I did however add two round and 2 square motifs to the hanging elements on the side tiles as the shapes balanced those of the hanging section of the centre panel.     I placed the square pieces on point to complement the bigger on point square of the centre panel.  

One of the hanging sections on the side panels with a similar bead at the bottom to the beads on the edge of the top section.

It was only after reaching this point in the process of making this quilt that I realized that it worked and that in fact I had a quilt....    The journey was intense, challenging and interesting - yet very satisfying....  I chose difficult elements to combine in this quilt and had to create balance with repeating colours, techniques and the different design elements.

Glow 2013

I was fortunate to win 1st Prize, Freestyle Masters at the 2013 National Quilt Festival in Bloemfontein with this quilt....