Intertwined Quilt

Today I’m delighted to share a new finished quilt! This is Intertwined and it’s made from all my Improv Flowers Workshop class samples, plus some extra details.

I’ve been teaching this class since 2017 when it was a workshop choice at that year’s Stitch Gathering retreat. The initial spark was a class I took with Anna Maria Horner at QuiltCon in 2015. That became my Improv Meadow quilt as seen in this post.  I took some simplified elements from this and turned it into a workshop where we made three improv flowers and added some of my tendrils technique.

I’ve taught this many times since then and most of these classes result in a finished panel that I make along with the students.  I had a pile of 11 of these ahead of my trip to teach in Oslo in March.  I decided to put some of these together to make them easier to display to my students and so I pieced 8 panels in to what has become the central 2 columns of the quilt.

Another panel was started during that class and a further one during a trip to teach in Malmo in May.

Once home I decided it was time to get this quilt finished!  I had to decide whether to make another 3 and keep with the 4 blocks per column structure or make just one more and stretch the remaining blocks a little.

I decided to go with the later idea and made my final block.  I then made quite a few EPP flowers and added a lot of ‘tendrilling’ leaves and stems to the panels.

Once I’d pieced all the blocks together I added extra tendrils that spread along the whole top (quite a cumbersome task). I have to say that I never get fed up with stitching leaves!!

I decided to quilt it in a minimalist modern style with my favourite ‘random plaid’ grid.  The top is very busy so I thought a plain quilting design would be best.

This is so easy to achieve on my Handi Quilter Moxie. It’s an absolute pleasure to quilt these randomly placed lines using the channel locker, so relaxing and mindful! I used Aurifil 40/3 cotton in two different off-white neutrals, one in one direction and the other in the other.  Nothing clever about this, I just ran out of one spool half way through!

The quilt is finished with a faced binding.

As a lot of you will know I live in the countryside on a 7 acre re-wilded plot of land. My life is very involved with nature and wildlife and the changing seasons. In fact the natural environment just becomes more and more important to me with every passing year. ‘Intertwined’ is a way to express my deep love and connection with nature.

This quilt wasn’t really planned but evolved over many years and I’m so pleased that it turned out to be as joyful and abundant as it did.  It has a lot of my heart and soul in it.

The title ‘Intertwined’ helps describe not just how I feel but how we all need to feel about the natural world. All our futures are intertwined irrevocably with the natural world and we all need to love, protect and cherish it.

Meanwhile I haven’t been able to stop stitching improv flowers…

This quilt now has a matching pouch!

I was inspired by one of my Norwegian students who decided to make her panel using hand piecing and so made really small flowers.

They looked so cute I decided to give them a try myself and made the panel above. I actually intended to go a bit smaller than this (13″ square) but I didn’t cut my scrappy strips narrow enough. I’m also not sure I really needed that top tendril as it may have been a better composition without, but as I said above, I just can’t stop stitching leaves!!

I hand quilted the panel using Aurifil 12wt wool and made it into this extra tall project pouch – check out the blog tutorial here if you want to make your own.

One last look at Intertwined. I’ve decided to enter it to Festival of Quilts in the Quilter’s Guild challenge category which this year is ‘The world we Share’. I think it fits the bill pretty well.