It might be embarrassing if I counted the number of started
but not finished quilts in my possession (UFOs in quilt language), so I have
resisted the temptation to count those lovely things inspired many moons ago
and tucked away in separate boxes for safe keeping. The Maningrida quilt is
one of them, which took its inspiration from two sources. The main source was
of course the beautiful cotton screen prints by the Indigenous women at the
Babbarra Women’s Centre in Maningrida in the Northern Territory, found in Spotlight
who advertised that 30% of all sales would go back to the group in Maningrida. Printed
on the selvedge of these beautiful fabric designs were the names of the artist sand
the name of the item that is part of the everyday lives of these aboriginal
women, items such as spider webs, fish trap designs and various edible plants
and roots, all in a variety of colour ways. Here is a sample of some designs.
The design concept came from a book by Weeks Ringle and Bill
Kerr entitled “Quilts made modern”.[1] It
struck me as being a very simple and elegant design for these fabrics, which
would go well with a quilt cover set I had for the second bedroom. It was going
to be double-bed size in its original manifestation, but having been put to one
side for a considerable number of years for multiple reasons. This grand design
has how more than halved, and is more like a cot size. I figure it is better to
get it finished in smaller dimensions than to struggle on with piecing the
minute scraps to make the design. So the full size of 87”x104” has now come
down to close to 32”x44”, named as a ‘wall or baby’ quilt (it's actually more like 36x36"). Just cutting my cloth according my means - by which mean, my energy reserves.
Strips of random colours involved joining a
various widths, from 1” to 2/14”, then cutting up into 2” lengths and joining
to make the long strips desired. Very labour intensive, and quite fiddly in
that all the seams needed to be pressed against themselves because of the cream
seeded cotton! I had almost half a quilt, when I decided to take a shortcut and
cut them all in half to make a wall/baby quilt. No more agonising!
I’m not getting any younger, and as most know, have been
dealing with immunotherapy treatment for metastatic melanoma over the past 3
years, eventually rendering the disease ‘inactive’ at the moment I am delighted
to report. But I’m not wasting any time,
so I am heading for a finished article! It will look nice above the said bed
covers on the wall until it decides to transition into a cot quilt! Below is
the quilt top, as yet unjoined to its batting and backing fabric. I might need
some help here!
The help I need is because I do not have a space to pin the
three layers together, and I do rather like the quilting design as it is shown on
the front cover of the book, as seen below. This can only be done by someone
with a long-arm quilting machine, so my next job is to look around for such a
person. Look forward to posting the 'final product'! Original design below.
[1] 2010, C&T Publishing: CA. I
bought it the year following publication, in 2011, so you can see how long this
little quilt has been waiting for its resurrection.
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