Monday, 29 August 2011
Making a Mess Monday
I have been making this quilt since 22nd March 2010. It's been a labour of not exactly love - more grim determination. I have now assembled all the bits and am ready to move to the quilting stage. EXCEPT...all the paper pieces need to be untacked and taken out.
There are literally thousands. This is not a quick job.
I remember talking to someone about the Kaffe Fassett knitting exhibition that had been on in the V&A years ago. They had talked about wanting to be able to see the inside of the intarsia and fairisle garments to see how the 'wrong side' had been handled. Then there is Kate who has a unique turn of phrase and talks about the "naughty" or "private" side (technical term) of her knitting. Quilts of course have exactly the same thing.
At the Festival of Quilts I had to physically restrain my mater from lifting up the quilt edges to look at the backs, despite the "DO NOT TOUCH" signs in every language and all handmade hanging from every available post.
It's natural to want to see what people have done where they weren't expecting it to show. Possibly this is why people (in general, not me) like reality shows.
So having to remove each of these paper hexagons individually, every one having been hand sewn by myself in the first place, has given me quite a lot of time to contemplate the naughty side.
Still another couple of hundred to go....things may get naughtier.
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4 comments:
LOL the naughty side...I like that! I remember taking all of the card out of the patchwork my Grandma made, I used to find it quite therapeutic. Maybe not so much now.
Can't wait to see the right side of the quilt all done.
Re hexagon templates; I always take mine out as I go along, after I've tacked the corners so the hexagons hold their shape. That's how my mum does it too. Never thought about leaving them in. Is that the usual way to do it? I only ever make about 5 or 6 hexagon templates for a whole quilt, though I make them out of card (usually from a cereal box) but if the corners become to blunted I do replace them so the hexagons stay even. So there you go; no real point to this comment, but I thought I'd share as I found the difference interesting! lol :D
At the wonderful quilting exhibition at the V&A last year, they had a really clever way of displaying some of the quilts with 'windows' in the wall so you could see the back. I was fascinated to see that some of the quilts had the papers still in. At first I assumed they were unfinished but the display suggested that the papers were left in deliberately to add extra strength/warmth to the quilts. So that's one option!
But otherwise, I do the same as Sarah and take them out as I go so that I can reuse the papers.
it would be fun to make all future paper templates out of erotic materials so that they really were 'naughty' and it might liven up the unpicking process...naughty thoughts!
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