Sunday, August 12, 2012

The Emma and Michael Quilt



One of the best ways I know to tell friends I love them is to make them a quilt. On a less altruistic level, giving quilts to others means I don't have a house taken over by them!
When I make a quilt for a friend, I often think about it for weeks or even months - what colours and prints to use mostly. The actual arrangement of the patches is not as important to me as the fabrics and colour. I just worked that out, cool!!
Ever since Lonely Heart, I have wanted to make Emma and Michael a quilt.
Emma and Michael at the piano during Lonely Heart rehearsals.
I love these guys so much and I know they would appreciate a bold colour scheme and a bit of tongue in cheek fabric choice.
The fabrics all have meaning specific to Emma and Michael. This is a couple who are a musical director with a passion for movies, and an actor with a love of clothes who also writes scripts. Both love their family and friends and each other dearly. I wanted to capture all of these ideas.
Block 1 from top left clockwise - Dorothy's Ruby slippers. Gorgeous dresses, Family and Friends text print, theatre masks and keyboards.
Block 2 - Gone with the Wind, musical notes, chandelier print from Phantom of the Opera range, love hearts and birds, film strip print.
These two 20" blocks are alternated and rotated.
Here they are arranged but not yet sewn up. That is tomorrow's job.
I love how the red, black and white with a hint of gold works so well together. Auditioning* a quilt online** is quite tricky as the colours and scales of print are so hard to judge. However, I find that colour schemes like red and black are safest to do, as they are fairly fail safe.
I also love this really simple pattern with its big 9x9 and 9x12 and 3x20 pieces as they really show off the fabrics, and these fabrics all need to have a few lines and a walk in part, or there would be a lot of sulking!
Next time, putting it together. :)

*Auditioning a quilt is the process of selecting which fabrics to include and which not. Much like a play audition! I may have to blog about this concept some other time...
**I only buy fabrics offshore that I cannot source here in the local shops. If we don't support them, we will lose them!

3 comments:

  1. How lovely and what a great friend you are. A gift that you have spent so much time, energy and passion on is much better than a gift you have purchased.

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  2. So they chose the fabrics, or you chose them for them?

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    1. Oh, I chose it! I don't make quilts when people choose the fabric, as it rarely works. Maybe one key fabric that I can work from. But mostly, and most of the quilters I know think this too, we have to enjoy it, as it is a huge job to make one and expensive, and the pleasure is in selecting the fabrics and arranging them, so just making up a quilt someone else chose, is only getting to do the boring bits heehe.

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