Soliloquy at the West Country Quilt Show 2013 - part 1

 I decided for the first time in my life to enter a quilt in competitive show - and what better place to start than my local one - the West Country Quilt Show.

You know by now that I love playing with pattern - not just creating new continuous line quilting patterns, but also playing about with each pattern, expanding it, shrinking it, distorting it - in short, anything but an exact repetition.

Soliloquy at the West Country Quilt Show 2013

Soliloquy grew out of a practice piece I was doing - white on white. I wanted to try white on white because it is such a quilting tradition, but i was also toying with the idea of quilting first, then dying, letting the dying be dictated by the quilting lines. Everyone who saw the piece loved it white and howled when I suggested colouring it. The problem was, how ever fascinating the quilting was close too,  from a distance, it just looked like a piece of white fabric.

So I came up with the idea of creating a single inset in a neutral tone. I wanted it to be simple but elegant, to draw people in from a distance so that they could see all the pattern work closer to.

Soliloquy - detail

I've added some close ups to show the quilting. The curved spaces both echo the idea of the inset and give a variety of stitch density and texture.

Soliloquy - detail 2

 When the space gets very narrow, particularly white on white, I really can not see what I am doing. I also find the quilting foot  gets in the way adding to the difficulties. In these situations, I try to do the shape by feel. I also try to comfort myself, if I can not see what I am doing, then hopefully neither can anyone else but with a digital camera's ability to zoom in, I may be kidding myself!

Soliloquy - detail 3

Oh, and just in case you are wondering, no I didn't win a prize. I did get a judges comment of 'Interesting design. Good machine quilting'. I got a 'good' for piecing, machine quilting and design - everything else was classed as 'satisfactory'. (The classes are -needs attention - satisfactory - good - excellent) Without knowing what the other quilts got in the way of comments and marks, I really can not judge if this is good for a first attempt or not. I do have a negative emotional response to the term 'satisfactory', which feels just OK enough not to complain about - and therefore totally forgettable. You don't notice what is just satisfactory. I've been trying to think of a term which could be more encouraging - 'promising' maybe, or 'shows potential'. Can anyone come up with a more satisfactory term than 'satisfactory'?

I'll show my second entry in part 2

Thanks for dropping by..

Hilary Florence