Treasure Beyond

This year, I decided to make wall/art quilts for my adult children as Christmas gifts. I had made my son an art quilt a couple of years ago when he first moved into his own place and had no decorations...my daughter openly covetted that frog quilt! So this time, I decided to make 2 quilts and make them just alike.

I actually started these quilts back in MARCH, but couldn't blog about them, since they were to be a secret.

After completing SHOULDA PUTTA RING ON IT, I still had lots of scraps of the wonderful batik fabrics. so, I decided to continue with the weaving theme I had used on that challenge quilt, only this time, I used two black strips to each strip of batik.


For this design, I created a more-open weave than before, and inserted small blocks at the warp/weave intersections. This meant that I would need to sew partial seams...which turned out to be a pain in the neck. Due to the small size of the blocks, the 'partial seams' were only about .5" long! But the effect was worth it. I used GOLD and SILVER lame' fabric (backed with fusible interfacing) for the little blocks...hoping to give the illusion that the gold and silver was beyond the screen-like woven piece. The treasure beyond...









Once the black strips were sewn to the batiks, I began working on the design. Once satisfied with the layout, I needed a way to make this portable, as I sew away from home some days.











I used a roll of drapery fabric as a 'tote'...laying the pieces on the fabric, then rolling it up and securing the ends with rubber bands. I could carry the project without losing the layout.









I notched the center of each strip on the side and end, so I could match the pieces. When sewing partial seams, I couldn't just sew from one end to the other! The quilt grew in rows, but they were slow rows!






Once the strips were assembled, I needed to add borders. But I didn't want the strips to just 'dead end' at the border...I felt like each strip needed some black across its end, too. But I didn't want to put a black border around the whole thing. So I made little TABS to insert at the strip ends!



I folded pieces of black fabric and sewed down each side...then I turned them right sides out. After a good pressing, theses little tabs were inserted into the seam between the 'weave' and the border, so that there was a little black tab at the end of each strip!








These tabs were like the period at the end of the sentence...they prevented the strips from just fading into the border. Nice!





These are not sewn down, but add dimension...like little flaps.






After adding the borders, I layered both quilts onto one piece of batting and backing so that I could quilt both quilts at the same time. I used a variety of colors of thread to quilt this, and doing all the reds, all the yellows, etc, at the same time would keep the thread changes to a minimum.








































I used a brown batik to bind this...again, a left-over from the previous quilt.

I really like these quilts...probably more than SHOULDA PUTTA RING ON IT, which is MY quilt. These will not be living with me, though, so I hope the kids like them as much as I do!