It’s hard to make a dull coloured quilt. Tonal difference is always important, but it feels a lot harder when tone becomes all you have to work with.
Earlier this year I entered a quilt into the Aotearoa Quilters annual colour challenge. It’s been running since 2013. The first colour was red, (see one of my red entried below) and they’ve been through most colours since then, so last year they switched it up to Colours of Spring, and this year it was Colours of Winter.
Now that’s always going to throw a curveball into a colour challenge! Winter is not exactly known for being colourful. But it’s a challenge, so I guess being challenging is part and parcel of the whole deal.
My Colours of Spring quilt was called ‘Season of Potential’ and featured a nest on a pink background with bright blue song thrush eggs. It now resides in it’s forever home in Australia. When pondering what to create for Winter, I decided to carry on the nest theme, and yes, I think it will work for the last two seasons if AQ decide to finish off the season theme.
I find winter to be a season of grey. We never get snow where I live and only the occasional frost, and we have lots of evergreen trees, so it seems like there should be plenty of colour around, but it just seems like everything is greyed off. Even the sky is dull, we don’t get a lot of those brilliant cold clear days that further south does. Can you tell that winter isn’t my favourite season?
So I pulled grey fabrics from my stash to see if I could find an appropriately wintery feeling sky background and I came up with a hand painted one. Next was the tree branch. I wanted some colour in the quilt, so I chose a strong purplish brown for a good contrast against the background. Then I began to build my nest.
I worked with pre fused fabrics and cut slim strips. I learnt from my spring quilt to fuse down a silk organza base first to avoid ‘holes’ in the base of the nest, then build up the curved walls, ironing each strip down as I went. I kept the darker strips to the bottom and added a few lighter ones as I got near the top for definition. I forgot to photograph my winter nest in construction, but here are some photos of my spring nest, you can see when I had to add an organza base to cover holes. You’ll also notice that my spring nest is a little more of a bird’s eye view (pun intended!) to highlight the eggs, but I wanted my winter nest to really look like a nest and not a blob, so it has a slightly more side-on viewpoint.
Lastly I added windblown leaves to add to the wintery effect, and machine quilted everything down, adding twigs to the branches and extra texture to the nest. I titled it ‘Season of Quiescence.’
I must have conveyed something Wintery, as I was very pleased to win a merit award for my efforts. Thanks to Aroha Quilts who sponsored my prize. I’m looking forward to spending my voucher with them next time I see them at a show!
These quilts will travel Aotearoa for a year, check the schedule below if you would like to see either of the AQ travelling exhibitions – Colours of Winter and the members juried challenge, Winging It. I have a quilt in both!
| September | Kapiti Coast Quilters Otaihanga, Kapiti Coast | Winging It | 13 – 14 September |
| September | Christchurch Quilters | Colours of Winter | 25 – 28 September |
| October | Golden Bay Patchwork and Quilt Guild | Winging It Colours of Winter | 26 – 27 October |
| October | Auckland Festival of Quilts | Winging It Colours of Winter | 31 October – 2 November |
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| May | Rose City Quilters, Palmerston North | Winging It Colours of Winter | 5 May |
| May | Taranaki Quilting and Patchworkers | Winging It Colours of Winter | 15 – 17 May |
| June | Whangamata Patch and Quilt | Winging It Colours of Winter | 30 May to 1 June |