Skirted

A week or so ago, I was kinda moping around trying to decide what to make next, and happened upon a too-small skirt that, a while back, I'd transferred from my closet to my stash. I loved that skirt. So much that I'd kept it around way longer that practical to serve its original purpose. But considering it was made from a nice neutral linen-cotton blend with subtlety contrasting top-stitching, I'd deemed it worthy of cutting up and incorporating into a quilt project. Without a clear plan for what was next, I cut my new 'fabric' free from its zipper, waistband, and hem, and set to finding some stash and scraps to mix with it.

As far as design inspiration, I thumbed through a few of my improv books, and in Gwen Marston's Minimal Quiltmaking, I found something I felt inclined to explore. The chapter was entitled "Hard-Edge Quilts," and in it, Gwen mentioned that the term "was coined in 1959 to describe the work of California painters who were painting 'non-representative work with clear and sharp delineated areas of color.'"

I ended up taking my project in two directions somewhat different than what Gwen described. One, my main 'fabric' was neutral, and I kept all my other fabrics the same, the notable exception, if you call it that, was an Essex Yarn Dyed in Leather - a light gold that matched one of the top-stitched threads in the skirt fabric. So color was definitely not a focus, rather the lack of it. Two, Gwen's examples were mostly on quite a large scale, where I got bogged down in smaller segments, though throughout the progression of my quilt, I worked to change that.

So in addition to the skirt, and that Leather Essex, I also used the skirt lining, which was a cotton poly blend, definitely not something I normally use in my quilts, but it was fabric, and it contrasted nicely to the skirt fabric. Also in the mix was a good bit of Essex Homespun in Natural, a fat-quarter of Carolyn Friedlander's Gleaned in White, and a scrap of Essex in Natural. All told, I added approximately three-quarters of a yard of stash and scrap fabric to the 1 1/2 yard of skirt/lining fabric to make the quilt top/

For quilting, I did emulate the mood of Gwen's quilts in the book, and used several different designs as I moved around the quilt. Guidelines were marked as needed with my trust hera marker, which means I marked stitching lines 2-3" apart then eyeballed the stitching lines in between.

I used mostly Aurifil 50wt #2309 [Silver White], though on the Leather Essex - and beyond just a bit - I used #2314 [Beige, but really a nice light gold]. The backing was pieced from stash, and I bound it in an unknown neutral, though I was just about 12" short after cutting up a fat-quarter.



Luckily a short length of another slightly lighter neutral was in my scrap basket nearby, so that was handy. For that short bit, I went ahead and top-stitched the binding as I was sewing it on - quirky maybe and not that visible in the finish - but it was fun and why not?




The quilt finished at 44" x 50", and it really fit the bill for what I needed this last week. Plus it was a nice change of pace to use a repurposed piece of clothing as my starting off point. There are two additional clothing items I moved from closet to stash along with this one, so don't be surprised to see another similarly inspired project soon.