Quilt of the Week #1

Suzanne's Celtic Knot

This is a 30X33 wallhanging I quilted for my client Suzanne. I don't do Celtic anything -- as  a freehander, parallel lines are too big of a challenge. Parallel lines need to be, well, parallel, a level of perfection freehanding doesn't achieve. But I knew I'd be using matching thread, it's small, and most important, this quilt cried out for complimentary Celtic designs. The background is too big to quilt just any old design on it and call it a day. I started to add round motifs in the corners, but they looked off center. So instead I tried to use a triangular design whose point would intersect the knot, but that didn't work either because the white space is a rectangle and the center motif is circular. So I found a simple border pattern and thought it would be easy to make it into a circle. Make that an oval -- the space is larger on two sides. After 4 tries, I finally got a design I liked.

This is the back of the quilt, which shows off all the quilting:

The whole effort was a mix of algebra and geometry, and math has alway been my Achilles' heel. I got a trapunto effect (extra stuffing that makes with the motif 3-dimensional) by using Hobbs wool batting. I marked the design with blue Wash-B-Gone. I quilted the chain, stippling inside as I quilted it. Intuition said echo it several times -- always listen to your gut -- then added dimensional crescent quilting on either side of the chain, a tiny crescent meander in the corners, small echoes between the chain and the knot, stippling inside the knot, and a tiny swirl at the very center. I put in large crescents in the braided border to make the pieced points lie flat and that resulted in beautiful texture. Finally, I quilted swirls in the outer border, following the pattern of the printed fabric.


It was so much work, and it took hours and hours, but it was worth it. Custom work is always worth it.