A quilt for Hemslöjd magazine
Back when 2020 was still anno domini and we were all waiting for it to end I got a request from the magazine Hemslöjd to write a how-to article for their February number which was to be themed “Mjukvara“, which translates into software.
This wasn’t a huge surprise to me, since i had written a similar article for them before about my heddles and how to weave a band but being asked again is a mark of honor to me.
My maternal grandmother was a subscriber to the magazine when I was growing up and I remember flicking through it as a teenager when I was in that awkward stage of searching for who I was, and to me that meant something real. I rarely returned the magazines to my grandmother, and found a stack of them hidden away many years later in a house move. I don’t think she wouldn’t have minded if she would have known that I was to be a contributor to the magazine in the future!
So, what would I make for a software issue? Something including mathematics surely… And the request from the magazine was to make something textile. A quilt seemed appropriate because, in theory, it includes a lot of counting and measuring!
I ended up measuring very little though, and went with one triangular shape the repeats itself to create the quilt top.
All photos are taken by Ellinor Hall, who had a cold at the time so instead of taking step-by step pictures while I was making the quilt I delivered it nearly finished accompanied by a sketch of the pictures that were needed for the text to make sense. Ellinor did a great job and the pictures came out beautiful!
As I was working on the quilt in the weeks before Christmas I thought a lot about what colors will appeal to people in February, which seemed so far away. I dug through my fabric stash and found a piece of red silk that I dyed with madder and thought that the vibrant tone would hit a sweet spot in the dreary early spring weeks, and now that February has come I can conclude that I was right.
As I didn’t have enough red fabric to make up all triangles heading in one direction, as mas my original idea, I decided to add some dark blue triangles to fill out the blank spaces. I have a lot of indigo dyed fabric from the test-dyeing for the indigo book, and I decided to use some of it for this project.
The back of the quilt is made from more scraps from the indigo stash, combined with a handwoven napkin gifted to me by a friend and the middle piece is made from a towel that was came from my grandmothers home. Sadly the middle of the towel was beyond saving but the edge with the monogram wasn’t as badly worn, and I consider the granny-embroidered “N” a little treasure.
This is actually not the first quilt I have made in this pattern, which is called “Flying geese“ because the triangles resemble geese flying across the autumn sky. A couple of years ago I made a quilt to show my appreciation of the designer William Kroll, who runs a clothing brand named Tender. I made the quilt out of fabric swatches that he sent out accompanying his seasonal collections and sent it back to him as a gesture of gratitude for the great work he does. I knew that William has a child, so I thought that a small quilt would be a welcome gift!
One thing that these quilts have in common is that I have tried to keep at least one of the grids in fairly the same lightness and/or color. In the Hemslöjd quilt the triangles pointing up are all made out of blue fabrics that are fairly close to each other in the shade, and in the Tender the same is true about the triangles pointing down. I find that this approach to the flying geese composition gives the quilt a calm feeling, even though there is a lot going on.
Another thing worth pointing out when making quilts is that it really is worth it to make sure your fabrics are nice. when sewing I always try to find fabrics with a nice sheen and avoid the old, dried out bedsheets that lurk at the back of the fabric stash. This is also true for dyeing; it doesn’t matter that you add a nice color to a fabric of the fabric itself is over-washed and dry. It will still be an old bedsheet (Yes Ikea, Im looking at your cheap ones that tend to pill after a while) but now it’s blue. And maybe even a quilt. It’s still icky though.
I’m not saying “Buy expensive fabric“ but I AM saying that you don’t have enough fabric that isn’t beautiful you should probably not start the project just yet.
Recently I was actually asked to write all the how-to articles for Hemslöjd’s 2021 publication. Planning projects within the loose boundaries of the number’s themes is really fun and I look forward to the task! Not to mention the joy of hearing of people who were inspired by my articles and are trying out the projects themselves, which is the greatest satisfaction to me as an author.
If you want to read the actual article on how to make the quilt you can pick up a copy of the magazine during February, or become a subscriber and get access to the huge digitalised archive at Hemslojd.se.