Thursday, January 31, 2008

Soft Centre

What a challenge this theme of "Chocolate" was! My goodness, Francoise, you really chose a tricky one and had me thinking hard!I agonised for weeks and weeks.
Eventually the many months of Jude's influence bubbled to the surface and I knew what I wanted to do. Jude's loving hand-stitches and gently rumpled fabrics floated through my thoughts. I remembered some pieces of cotton velvet that I had in the cupboard. I handpainted this piece with silk paints until it reminded me of all my favourite soft centres - strawberry, raspberry, boysenberry and a smidge of orange.

Soft Centre
The background is pieced together from all the fragments of chocolate brown fabric in my scrap basket. There are curves in those seams to make the most of each piece - never a crumb of chocolate should be wasted! The velvet was reverse appliqued behind the background, the edges of the brown turned under and whip-stitched with six strands of hand- dyed floss. Every stitch was as yummy as a bite of chocolate!
It had to be hand-quilted to make the rumples truly rumple, so I used embroidery floss and a large, uneven stitch to make curvy lines of quilting. I was so pleased with way the velvet lifted and formed gentle folds.
The little heart in the corner came last! It is satin-stitched in place and then triple-stitched on each side of the satin-stitch. One of my current loves/obsessions is little tags and brandings and labels, snuck into corners of things. This heart is a reference to those and also a reminder that the quilt is a love-note to Soft Centres from Me.
In the end, I am so happy with this little quilt. Thank you, Francoise, I would never have made it without you! (and you, too, Jude xx)

More photos and construction info on my blog, twolimeleaves.

15 comments:

Unknown said...

I love the texture of this one. And now I crave a strawberry cream!

magsramsay said...

Scrumptious!

Gerrie said...

I love the stitching. That pink center looks good enough to eat!!

Gerrie said...

Whoops, I forgot to check the e-mail button.

Gerrie said...

It happened again.

Karen said...

I really like the handstitching on this, it adds so much texture

Brenda said...

This is so luscious!

Terri Stegmiller said...

Mmmm, this is yummy. I, too, love the hand stitched texture.

Terry Grant said...

Sooooo yummy!

Deborah Boschert said...

Beautiful in so many ways! Love the stitching and the color combination and the unexpected heart.

Kristin L said...

The tactile aspects of this are so wonderful -- I want to touch it, and maybe even eat it!

Françoise said...

Beautiful and yummy! I love it.

Nikki said...

Every detail is so beautiful--the shades of chocolate, the curved quilting lines, the soft velvet, the loving heart brand.

Diane Perin said...

Oops! I commented earlier but it's not here so I'll say it again -- I love the soft richness of this one, Kirsty. The rumpley texture and the softness of the fabric gives that feeling of soft melty chocolate. the stitching is wonderful. I see this and I taste raspberry chocolate!

jpsam said...

The texture are excellent! And I love the close values of the chocolate. Wonderful work!