A few days ago I dyed a piece of silk, and when it dried, I realized that it would go perfectly in my bedroom. So even though I have a stack of unfinished quilts I need to get working on I immediately took my nice piece of silk and started cutting it up into random squarish pieces. I was going to make perfect squares, but silk is squirrelly and likes to shimmy on the cutting mat, so I just kind of went with whatever it wanted to do.
After I had my stack of squares, I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with them. I got a larger piece of fabric ready (about 22" x 48") and sewed my first square on, but then I was all... wait a minute. Do I know what I'm doing? And the answer was no. I wanted to try to do something that I could have raw edges on and still look cool. So I put the larger piece aside and just started working on a smaller, test piece. The smaller quilt turned out to be 12 1/2" x 15".
Here's the finished result:
The background fabric is my favorite fabric
ever.
It's some really drapey embroidered and printed cotton that I got at JoAnns a few years ago. I made the drapes for my bedroom using this fabric, and also have a quilt top that incorporates this fabric in it as well that I need to finish for my bed. I am so doing the matchy-matchy thing, which I normally don't, but I don't care since I love that fabric so much.
I took the silk pieces and folded them up and quilted over the pointy ends.
After I put the binding on, I went back and added the beads. I think the quilt will be nice in the summer, when I have my windows open, and the breeze will blow the little silk blossoms around.
Here's a pic of it in my bedroom (I don't have a hangy thing for it yet, so we just stuck it on a dowel rod to take the picture).
I have those stripes painted at random widths and intervals around the whole room.
And here's a pic of the silk before I cut it all up:
After making this, I'm still not sure how I'm going to incorporate my silk squares into the larger piece I was originally planning on making. I'll figure it out at some point.
