|
|
 |
When we had Thanksgiving dinner with the Reid and Plante families in November 2003, I asked Alison what color she wanted her wedding quilt to be. Her favorite color is "Eggplant" and she suggested green as the second color. I had seen this 19th century applique quilt at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont just a month before. I especially liked the diagonal flow of vines and thought it would be a good layout to use in the future. I made a black and white copy of the quilt photo from the exhibition catalog "Art of the Needle: 100 Masterpiece Quilts from the Shelburne Museum" by Henry Joyce at the New England Quilt Museum Library where I'm a volunteer. |
 |
I scanned the photocopy into my PC and used the eraser tool in Photoshop to replace the pomegranates with leaves. I then reversed the black vines on a white background to make white vines on a black background with the "invert" command in Photoshop and showed Alison and Doug my idea. They agreed it would be fine with green vines on an eggplant background. Alison and her mother, Kate, came with me to Quilter's Way in West Concord where we selected a deep eggplant Bali batik for the background and a green Bali batik with pink, lavender and peach swirling leaves for the foreground. We found a light Moda Marblemates print with all the same light colors for the back of the quilt. |
 |
For help in laying out the vines, I used the instructions for a "Wild Roses" quilt in
Jean Van Bockel's
book "Meadowbrook Quilts: 12 projects inspired by nature." It had a very similar layout. |
 |
I pressed the edges of all the leaves and vines under and did the applique on my machine with a straight stitch and matching green thread right along the folded edges. The stitching is less visible than a zigzag and is more sturdy than hand applique. |
 |
The quilt is filled with Warm and Natural cotton batting. To make it really durable, the quilt was free-hand quilted with vines and leaves all over the background by my friend Julie Crossland of Hudson, New Hampshire on her commercial quilting machine. I bound it with the same green Bali batik I used for the vines and leaves. It is double bed size (80" X 80"). |
