Soul Siam Quilt Contest - Making My Quilt

Finally my finished quilt!  It has passed the first stage of judging and I now have to present my quilt to the judges. 

I really had to laugh to myself, it is just proving impossible to get a straight on photo of my quilt!

 The theme was 'expressing your Thai identity'.  I decided that as I am not Thai (and therefore do not have a Thai identity), I would interpret the theme to mean what says Thailand to me, and came up with rice farmers.   It is called Heavenly Rice because before it was finished the rice farmers looked like farmers in the heavens and to fit the show theme, Thai Jasmine rice is heavenly!

Once I had the idea, my vision for the quilt was very strong.  I wanted the female farmer to be the focus of the eye and the rice to form almost a textural background.  I was determined to work to a design that I liked (rather than going for what I thought would be a crowd pleaser) as ultimately it would sit on my wall, so I embraced something I love, a feeling of sparseness.  I had thought of having a line of workers all dressed differently but quickly dismissed that.  What I wanted was to express a long day with the farmer working across a field doing the same repetitive job.  Adding other elements would only detract from that (although I did play with a few ideas). I also wanted the quilt to look quite graphic, simple and to utilise a limited colour palette.  Initially I had wanted to have a sort of pop-art look, but I couldn't pull that together.

The size and thickness of both the background and backing fabrics, meant that I needed to dye them in a large container.  I used a rectangular storage box and scrunched the fabric very tightly into it.  I was concerned that the bottom layer of the fabric wouldn't get any dye as the fabric was so tightly scrunched so I removed it very carefully.  I found the fabric more or less retained the shape of the box. 

I mixed the dye using guess work to judge how much dye would be needed.  I poured half the solution into the bottom of the box and carefully placed the fabric back into the box and poured the rest of the dye over the top of the fabric.  I pushed the fabric into the dye to help the dye travel through the fabric.  I removed the fabric from the dye after a couple of hours as initially I thought I would use a light background.  

It was just after I had washed, ironed and admired my fabric, that I realised it was too small!  I had accidentally dyed fabric to the finished size of the quit, which would not allow for quilting shrinkage or squaring the quilt.  I cut strips of fabric to piece onto the background fabric and dyed those to what I hoped would be a darker colour to the main fabric since I knew I wouldn't be able to duplicate the original colour.  I also dyed another panel of the backing fabric.

Once I had pieced the background fabric it looked both insipid against the fabrics for the farmers and the pieces I had pieced looked too much like I was attempting to match the fabrics.  I  re-dyed the backing fabric (and the binding, which by this time had already been cut) using the same process as above, but as there was a light spot on the fabric that I really liked, I held that out of the dye bath using elastic bands. This process worked really well.  

The overdye helped to meld the piecing and the section held out of the dye bath looked fantastic glowing against the darker fabric.  You can see the difference in the fabrics.  The dyes used were Dharma's Cobalt Blue and New Black.

The farmers were pieced using commercial batik and hand dyed fabric.  I wanted to use really strong colours that would stand out from the background as I wanted the farmer to really catch the eye and only when you got nearer to the quilt would the rice stand out.  I hand painted some detail onto the hat using fabric paint and the freezer paper as a stencil.  Initially I had thought to use thread to delineate arms and folds (see above), but I didn't like that look.  

I unpicked the one I had sewn and used fabric paint instead. All but the partial farmer were machine appliquéd to the backing fabric.  The partial farmer needed to be placed at the edge of the quilt, so only when I had cut down the quilt, would she be placed.

Fused batik fabric, which I hand cut in increasingly larger sizes, was used for the rice.  I thought this would take no time at all but I was actually at it for days, carefully cutting and then lining it up in rows to resemble the way rice is planted.  I was desperately low on steam-a-seam, so had to carefully work out which fabrics I was using and cut small amounts at a time, so as not to waste any.  I finger pressed them into place until I was happy with the arrangement and finally fused them into place.  I was left with a piece of steam-a-seam about 6"x4", so I was really lucky.

I was dreading the quilting process given the poor state of my sewing machine, which by then had so much wrong with it, I was not entirely sure it would finish the quilt!  As I was worried about the quilt bulk I had planned to use thin felt as batting (reasoning that it wouldn't be washed so would hopefully be okay) but my quilting friend Iris stepped in with the offer of some Hobbs Thermore polyester batting.  What a lifesaver, it is amazingly thin and light and if I could only get my hands on it, I would use it all the time.  For someone like me who really likes very flat quilts, this is the stuff!

I quilted most of the figures first, reasoning that they roughly ran through the middle of the quilt, then worked out.  I meander stippled between the rice, which I felt would have the feel of water but be very subtle.  I quilted a small section, but wasn't too sure.  I moved to the side and quilted another section much smaller and liked that so much better (no great surprise there).  I then had to sit and unpick the bit I had sewn.  Oh how I wished I had stopped to look at it sooner as the stitches were so tiny, it took ages to unpick!

To digress slightly here, does anyone else experience the cow chewing cud mouth movement, done in time to the rhythm of the movements when stippling?  I noticed I did it some time ago and then a friend told me that she too had noticed that she made the same mouth movement.  Well, there was so much stippling on this quilt I almost dislocated my jaw!

In the open water area I used more traditional water effect quilting, which I think texturally worked quite well.  I used about 6 different thread colours in the water areas, mostly variegated.  

The final partial farmer was layered and quilted separately and after the main quilt had been cut and squared, I appliquéd it to the corner.

Finally, after weeks of hard work and a potential divorce(!), my quilt was finally finished.