Uncharted
This quilt represents a lot of uncharted territory! I usually create quilts with a practical purpose with a strong modern influence, or when I want to practice accurate cutting and piecing, quilts featuring traditional blocks, especially stars. Although I have often ‘made up’ quilts before, I did not feel that I had ‘designed’ a quilt and wanted to try something new to me.
I had been fascinated by pixelated pictorial quilts. A few years ago, a number of stunning quilts had appeared around the world, designed by their creators, either made up of squares or squares and strips. For instance this amazing (and huge) quilt made by Kristy Drum at St Louis Folk Victorian of David Tennant as the tenth doctor.
Whilst I was mulling over ideas for a subject, I found myself watching ‘Spirited’ an Australian television supernatural comedy-drama series created by Claudia Karvan and Jacquelin Perske in 2010/11. It stars Claudia Karvan, as Suzy Darling, a woman leaving a bad domestic situation, and Matt King as Henry Mallet, who (spoiler!) finds himself to be a ghost a long way from home. Both in uncharted territory. I liked the contrary notion of making a quilt featuring a ghost, making something tangible and touchable to represent a character who was neither of these things.
The graphic black and white style with shades of grey worked well for a ghost, especially one that was a 1980s rock star. I tried to give the quilt a punk feel by having areas where the thread does not match the fabric, the piecing is a little rough and ready and quilting simply by hand.
I used a promotional image from an interview and a free programme (https://www.imgonline.com.ua/eng/) to convert it to a simpler, black and white image. I then used the Preview programme on my MacBook to create a pixelated image. This was converted to a chart (another contradiction) using Numbers (the spreadsheet software on my laptop). I picked up tips from Caro Sheridan’s class “Pictures to Pixel Quilts” on Craftsy. I used the number of pixels to specify the finished size of the quilt.
I decided on 5 main shades: white, black, light grey, mid grey and dark grey. Mostly purchased from my LQS, Hometown, Rochester, with a few different shades of white and black, including a non-quilting kind of shiny black fabric to add interest to the jacket. I didn't want the quilt to end up very big. I had decided that the minimum pixel width was 60, so based the quilt on 1/2" finished squares. When I had four squares, or more, of the same colour, I cut them as one larger square. I did not want to use rectangles or strips as I felt this would take away from the pixelated look I was going for. I mostly quilted by hand, marking with a Hera marker, sewing 2'4 stitches of a matching thread in each 1/2 square - marking a 1/2" grid on larger squares. I used machine quilting, and some silver metallic thread on the border.
Finally, just because I have never done it before, I entered the quilt into The Festival of Quilts 2022 in Birmingham. It is not the best pieced or quilted quilt I have ever made, but I think it is interesting. Despite a bit of a bike bash up. I hope to see the quilt hanging up on Saturday at the show.
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