An Original Quilt inspired by a picture
My husband told a friend that I make quilts.
Then my husband told me that he had told his friend that I would make him a quilt—and had already asked what he wanted it to look like. 😳
This is the picture that was sent to my husband for inspiration.
This quilt is completely my own design. It is not something that I ever thought I would make. In fact, when I first was presented the idea I said not only NO, but H#&%, NO! I can’t do that. Are you crazy? How do I ever go about starting something like that?
An Idea was born
But then I started wondering… how would I start something like that? Could I break it down into manageable pieces?
The background actually looked fun. I thought I could do something similar. I knew I could raw-edge appliqué something onto a quilt, but how would I make the shadow appear?
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to try to create this “impossible” quilt.
I Got to Work
I knew I would need to shorten the length so that it would fit on a bed. I played with several different layout options until I felt like I had something that worked. I didn’t want to lose too much of the shadowed eagle or the word at the bottom, and it took a while to figure out the right proportions.
Once I knew roughly the size and layout, I started with what I considered the easiest part of this quilt: the background.
Creating the background
I’ve made several string quilts, and that’s what the background reminded me of.
I started with some black corner blocks. They were very structured, but after laying them out, I realized I needed the blocks to feel more haphazard. I started cutting and sewing with abandon, creating the background as I went.
The blocks became a complete mishmash of crazy. I would definitely do it differently if I made it again, but overall it gave me the look I was going for.
Raw edge applique to the rescue
I don’t like doing appliqué—and I definitely didn’t want to piece the eagle for the center of this quilt. I decided the easiest option for me was raw-edge appliqué. This also gave the quilt a more edgy, rough-and-tumble feel.
I drew the eagle on paper and traced it onto black fabric. Then I cut out the gray and white accent pieces and top-stitched everything together on my domestic sewing machine, knowing I would later quilt all of the outlines on my longarm.
The Hard Part
I knew I wanted the second eagle to look see-through, but I had no idea how to make that happen. I don’t know anything about sheer fabrics.
The other challenge was the scale of the quilt. I decided to make my own pattern for the shadowed eagle by taping paper together and sketching it out at full quilt size.
Trial Run
My first version of the shadow didn’t give me the pop I wanted. You could see the eagle, but it faded too much into the background.
So it was back to the store for more sheer fabric. This time I picked up black to layer behind the white, hoping it would give me more contrast.
It definitely worked! It took several tries to figure out where to place the black and how much of it I wanted showing to give just the right look.
I glued the sheer fabric to the background with washable glue and loaded the quilt onto the longarm for final stitching. It was an involved process—and I forgot to take pictures.
After the sheer fabric was stitched down, I did the same thing to the eagle appliqué.
I finished the quilt with a simple edge-to-edge design to hold everything together.
The final product
There are several things I would do differently next time, but I am extremely happy that I challenged myself to do something that I didn’t think was possible!