When is a quilt not a quilt?
Probably the best way to answer that is to tell you a little about a project I was so pleased – and a little nervous – to be invited to tackle on behalf of a former soldier who has served his country, with great distinction, all over the world from the seventies to the noughties.
The commission involved a regimental crest featuring one of those regiments now amalgamated into another; the challenge I faced was how to retain the critically important elements of the crest, such as battle honours, colours and tones so special to those who served, while working with fabrics which ordinarily are destined to spend the future scattered across a double bed!
And that’s the riddle of asking why a quilt is sometimes not a quilt crossed my mind because the project is a good example of a triple-layered fabric design emerging not as a quilt but a wall-hanging.
What was even more daunting about this one was that the recipient, a retired Colonel, had no idea the piece was being made for him so I was really just relying on images I had from old photographs of the original regimental crest.
There were plenty of challenging moments! Learning, on the go, how to ‘age’ a pattern in a subtle but effective manner while not completely ruining the fabric!
Counting, cutting and recounting the individual medallions circling the proud battle honours and then calculating the sharp diagonals for each battle (with a dictionary always close by: you don’t get a second chance at spelling once the sewing starts!)
I was pleased with the outcome and what’s much more important, so was the Colonel!
Denise