The quilt was a labor of love and incorporated natural materials and dyes. After cutting, mordanting, and dyeing the strips according to the design, I sewed the strips together with my 1970s Singer. I layered the bottom layer, a sheet dyed with indigo, two layers of batting, and the top layer and pinned them together using special quilting safety pins. I hand-quilted the layers together using off-white, orange, and navy cotton quilting thread. I trimmed the batting and attached the bias binding, made of printed cotton from the fabric store.
MATERIALS: raw silk, cotton, wool batting
DYES: indigo, madder root, Hopi sunflower seeds, marigold, cochineal, alkanet, sandalwood, turmeric
Cosmo was actively engaged throughout the fabrication process and was made head of quality control. The quilt passed with flying colors.
I ordered fabric before I finalized the design, and I knew the amounts would be close, so I had to get creative.
I used AutoCAD to pull in the 8 yards of fabric and organize the necessary pieces for cutting. Each piece was sorted according to the design and dyed in the corresponding vats.
