Painting with Thread

If you follow me on Pinterest you might have seen some pretty cool art quilts that I pinned a couple of weeks ago. Our Deputy Commander is leaving and I was commissioned to make a quilt from our Directorate. She is a pretty special person with a neat story, and a great supporter of the arts. So I wanted to make her something really nice. I wanted to use the Mandala as inspiration for the quilt.

In researching this concept I came across this one that apparently was in a quilt show. Isn't that quilt STUNNING?!?! I found this thread on The Quilting Board which I THINK is the beginning of the same quilt. And that's how I figured out how to do this:

 BAM!

So it started out with a sketch from the link above to build the pattern. I stuck some Steam a Seam onto the scraps of fabric and then traced the pattern. The cool thing about Steam a Seam is it's sticky, so you don't have to iron it until you are ready to permanently set it. So you can play around with the layout until you are happy and then blast it with the iron.

 Then I put it on the long arm. It's going to be a wall hanging so I didn't stitch the edges. The original quilter satin stitched her edges. I didn't bother. I knew the quilting would hold everything in place.

And twelve hours of quilting later...

 My shoulders were so sore by the time I was finished... but it was worth it!