Chenille Crazy Quilt Sampler

Chenille Crazy Quilt Sampler

Quilts made with leftover pieces of fabric are called charm quilts, and this one is just that.  It is made from a lot of my early hand-dyed fabrics.  The fuscia, turquoise and smoky-colored paralellagram was created using a shibori wrap dye technique.  In the lower righthand corner is a postage stamp rectangle of squares, about an inch or two inches big.  I see some red stripes that evoke an abstract flag idea.

You may be familiar with foundation pieceing... it is where you start with a muslin square and build the surface layer by sewing pieces in strips across it.  This is sort of one big huge foundation piece on a scruffy old acrylic fleece $10 used nubby blanket that had worn out beyond being comfortable.  I started piecing pieces onto it because it was scratchy.  As the pieces were added, and sometimes later, I added commercial chenille yarn between and across the fabrics to give it a windowpane or stained glass effect.  This was kinda cool-looking, but it also served a purpose of bonding the surface to the underblanket where there were wide expanses that would have otherwise hung loose.

This is the back of the Blue Quilt featured here some time last month.  It is quite different from the calm, soothing and elegant opposite side.  I usually use it with the blue side up.  I am not particularly fond of this side of the quilt as a favorite... it just happened to have been made at a time when I was less selective about which quilts I keep and which quilts I give away or sell.  It breaks my almost-rule of never working with the color red.  Early on, I did a few quilts with red in them but found it to be unsettling or unattractive as a quilt color and have stopped using red as a personal design color.