Balance

Yesterday was reveal day over at Tangled Textiles. As usual I spent most of the two months brainstorming ideas and techniques for the theme. The two finalists for my quilt included a color principle by Itten where I planned to create a color field illustrating the 'balance' of color relationships. I did a few sketches with my Nook (above). Finally I settled on the idea of showing the Attempt at Balance using a yoga based figure to illustrate our attempt at balance in the midst of our swirling lives. My figure is falling off balance as I often do in this yoga pose as I attempt to hold it beyond my limit, just as I sometimes do in other areas of life as I take on more than I can balance.

This is a whole cloth quilt, a first for me, using acrylics and fabric medium. Basically, paint, quilt, paint, quilt and finally for the binding I wanted something frayed yet finished on the outer edge, so I created an inside frayed edge. I thought of the napkins I've made by simply doing a wide decorative stitch around the square of fabric then unraveling the threads to created a fringed edge. For this binding I used a single piece of fabric rather than the usual folded double piece used traditionally for a binding. I sewed it wrong side to wrong side, turned the binding to the front and stitched it down using a wide herringbone-like stitch. I then measured the width I wanted the fringe, drew a line and cut off the excess fabric. Then simply unravel the threads to create my inside fringe.

If you open the photo with the scissors in a new window it enlarges enough to see the stitch I used on the binding. Any stitch really should work - it just needs to prevent the fabric from continuing to ravel. 

Enjoy the amazing variety of balance quilts over at Tangled Textiles!

Namaste!