It is grandmother Koidu's birthday, and a grandmother as special and dear as she is deserves a special present too.
The children sent a pile of coloured linen offcuts along with the commission: green, yellow, blue, orange, pink, brown, red. A few photographs of the room the present was going to were included as well.
Since light tones dominated the room and a love of flowers was plain to see, I picked out fabrics in pastel tones and decided to use a pattern with large flowers. I had wanted to try this pattern for some time, and this piece of work was a good opportunity.
I got the idea for the pattern from this book:
For the background fabric I chose a modest grey with little snowberry branches. For the backing and the binding, a pale green cotton.
Linen is a fabric that visibly shrinks after washing, and it should be washed before the sewing begins. Unfortunately the offcuts available were too small and frayed badly; they would have fallen apart entirely in the wash. So I sewed the background from squares of grey sateen and pale green linen. The large blocks with the flowers I laid between them in a pattern. I quilted the whole quilt, square by square. The squares in the patterned part got quilting that imitates petals, and those at the edges a wave pattern, symbolising the waves of her sea of life.
Quilting adds depth and appeal to a quilt and makes it stand up better to washing later on.
Right at the end I added little leaves of woollen fabric among the flowers.
The grandmother's quilt measures 200x220 cm. Making it took about 80 working hours.
More pictures of the quilt under "Portfolio, large quilts"
