Saturday, 8 September 2007

Quilt pattern: Calla Lily appliqué creation – the idea.

Quilt pattern: Calla Lily appliqué creation – the idea.

I am often asked how I come up with designs for quilt patterns, so I thought I would give you an example how I went about creating my Calla Lily quilt.

My designs usually start out by seeing something or being asked a question, in the case of the Calla Lily, I was asked, have you thought of making a Calla Lily quilt design? Actually, the answer was yes, I have already made a stained glass lily quilt but not as a pattern in my colour wash series. So I decided, why not and set about doing some research, soon to discover reasons for making such a quilt pattern.

I opened the encyclopedia to reveal that its real name is Zantedeschia (it’s a good thing I’m writing this, as there is no way I can say that). Common names include Arum Lily, Calla and Calla Lily (much easier to pronounce). And another useful piece of information I found was that it is erroneously spelled as Cala Lily.

I also know that the Calla Lily is often known as a Christmas Lily and has often been used in many paintings, one in particular being Georgia Okeeffe’s artwork.

So, upon collecting all this data, it now seemed like a great reason to turn the Calla Lily into a quilt. Since so many already enjoy this beautiful flower in many different ways, why not a quilt pattern?

As it happened, last year when I was thinking about all this, I happened to be attending school to which I walked every day and I noticed along the entire length of a church that I passed, a garden of Calla Lilies coming into bloom. As the spring days turned into summer, I watched and observed these flowers opening day by day until decided it was better remembered by capturing a snapshot on my camera (actually, it was more the fact that I kept forgetting to take my camera with me). After several weeks went by, and I realized school was coming to an end so I would no longer be taking this path, I finally snapped these amazing flowers for life time memories to use in my quilt designs.

Here are a couple of my snap shots.





So, with all these points of interest, photos and Christmas time looming, I set to and began drawing the design. The ‘idea’ is only a small part of the creation process, the design itself is a story for another day, but if you would like to see the result you can see it here. My Calla Lily quilt pattern: Light Upon The Earth

Ruth... PS for more applique patterns in this series, see our main applique pages and remember, I'm available with online support if you need help with the pattern. Applique patterns.

Saturday, 1 September 2007

Quilting New Zealand

Hi to you all,

I just finished posting a new article on the website, this one is about New Zealand Quilting. I have been crafting all my life, well for as far back as I can remember, and quilting now for 25 years. Things have certainly changed in that time, from using scissor to rotary cutter and ruler, and from dress fabric to good cotton patchwork fabric. You don't notice it at the time, but I assure you, if you go back to how it was, you can certainly appreciate how lucky we are today with the wonderful selection of quilting fabrics and supplies. It certainly makes life a whole lot easier.

For those interested, you may like to read my quilting article of
Quilting - New Zealand style