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Summer 2021 Mini Quilt Challenge: Wholecloth

  • Writer: vafibrearts
    vafibrearts
  • Jun 28, 2021
  • 8 min read

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!


It is the end of the first week of my Summer 2021 Mini Quilt Challenge, so it's time to share my first mini quilt! Any of you who joined me last week will know I chose wholecloth for my first prompt, and I'm absolutely thrilled with the quilt I've made!


If you missed the challenge announcement last week, check out that post to learn more about the guidelines and prompts. If you're interested, feel free to join me in this challenge! You can work at your own pace, making more or fewer quilts than I do, and even add your own prompts related to any techniques you want to try!


But back to the wholecloth prompt. Keep reading Friends, to learn more about my research, design, and to see the first finished mini quilt!



Wholecloth Research


A wholecloth quilt is made using a single, whole piece of fabric as a quilt top. Because they don't include any elaborate piecing, the focus of a wholecloth quilt is on the design of the quilting.


Depending on the thread weight and colour, quilting can create a lot of different effects on the surface of the fabric. High contrast colours and thick thread are very visible, while low contrast and fine threads are more difficult to see.

But even in cases where the stitches may be nearly invisible, the quilting will create some really amazing textures! Certain parts of the quilt may turn out puffier with less quilting, or very flat with dense quilting. The puffy parts can be further emphasized by adding extra batting to only those parts of the quilt, or by using a double layer of batting all-over.


As for the fabric, wholecloth quilts are most commonly made using solid, non-printed fabric. This allows the quilting to shine without being obscured by intricate or busy prints.


However, some printed fabric is made specifically for wholecloth quilts. These fabrics have a quilting template printed onto them, so makers can skip marking and get straight to quilting! These templates are usually printed with water soluble ink, so the lines will wash away, leaving behind a beautiful quilted design.


These printed template panels are a great option for people who want to practice their quilting. They allow you to experiment with a variety of different designs, and help train your brain to follow continuous quilting pathways!



Wholecloth Motifs


There are four common motifs used in wholecloth quilting. Regardless of what style of quilt you want to make, the designs you quilt will probably fall into one of these categories. I chose to use the shapes of oak leaves and acorns to make the samples below.


Medallion: the central motif on a wholecloth quilt is commonly called a medallion. These take up most of the centre of the quilt, and are the main focus. They often include lots of small details to create visual interest.

Although they are called medallions, these designs are not always round. They can use a wide variety of shapes to create a unique and compelling form!


Corners: any motif set in the general shape of a right angle triangle are considered corner designs. As their name suggests, these designs are used to decorate the corners of a quilt.

Beyond being used for corners, these designs can be repeated and rearranged to create more complicated motifs. For example, the design at the bottom used two of the top corner motifs to create a larger, more complex corner.


Borders: long, narrow, linear motifs are generally designed for use as borders. Since wholecloth quilts don't have pieced borders, divisions in space need to be created using quilted designs instead.

Cables, vines, and even simple parallel lines are often used as border designs.


Background: it's very common to fill the negative space between motifs with a background design. These designs will flatten the negative space and bring more focus to the dimensionality of the primary quilting motif.

Any all over design will work for this purpose, although grid patterns are most common.



Traditional Wholecloth Quilts


During the later 19th and early 20th century, wholecloth was a really popular style in northern England and in Wales. So much so, that wholecloth quilting was sometimes called English quilting.


The most traditional wholecloth quilts were of the white-on-white or whitework style. These quilts were made using a bleached white fabric and matching white thread. The low contrast made the individual stitches very difficult to see, but the white fabric shows shadows really well and creates a lot of emphasis on the texture of the quilting.


Traditional wholecloth motifs generally depicted the things quilters saw around them in their daily lives, including leaves, ribbons, and flowers. There are also regional designs based on local cultures and religions, such as Celtic knot work.


One thing that's a little different between today's traditional style wholecloth quilts and actual antique quilts is the size of the fabric. Due to the limited size of looms, fabric in the 19th century was not as wide as we can make it now, so several lengths of fabric would need to be sewn together down the salvage to make a bed-sized quilt.

Another interesting technique was to piece a square of contrasting fabric into the middle of the quilt to help emphasize the central medallion motif. This isn't a technique I've seen used recently, but that's not to say someone isn't still doing it!



Modern Wholecloth Quilts


Modern wholecloth quilts embrace the variety of stitched designs that can be made using machine quilting.


The difference between machine and hand quilting is the quality of the line: hand quilting creates a dashed or broken line, while machine quilting is a continuous line. Really small, detailed designs like pebbles don't work well when quilted by hand since the line can get lost, but they are perfect for machine quilting!

Modern wholecloth motifs often subvert the expected design by emphasizing the all-over background quilting. Alternatively, they may follow the overall design conventions of traditional wholecloth quilts, but add a modern twist using minimalism, or geometric forms.


One particular characteristic of modern quilting is the desire to use continuous quilting whenever possible. This involves a lot of travelling over existing quilting lines to avoid breaking thread.



Making the Mini


With all of that research in mind, I started designing my motif!


I wanted my wholecloth mini to reflect both the more traditional, hand sewn motifs, and the modern, machine method. I decided the best way to do this would be to divide my quilt in half, and represent each style in its own space.

Because of the small size of the piece, I decided to divide it diagonally and put a modern and traditional motif in two opposite corners. I drew several sketches inspired by different quilting designs, and ended up liking mariner's compass inspired design shown below.

With the design drawn up, I had to figure out which fabric I would use. I thought about what colour I wanted to use for my background and thread choices, I really liked the idea of using an assortment of lighter threads on a navy or royal blue background, but with the limitation of working from my stash and my love of printed fabric, I didn't end up with much of a choice.


Considering I was looking for a solid fabric, it came down to a red cotton, leftover from the TrendTex challenge, and an off-white muslin. I wasn't sure what thread colour I would pair with red fabric, and was worried the colour might bother my eyes if used as a background, so I ended up using the muslin.

Since the muslin was an off-white, I chose to go the whitework route and use white thread too!


With all of my decisions made, I began work on the actual quilt. According to my research, the motif needed to be marked onto my fabric before basting the layers together, so I cut a square of batting and two of muslin, drew my motif on one of the muslin squares using a pencil, and thread basted the layers together.

My research also told me that I should begin quilting in the centre and work out, but with such a small piece, I wasn't very worried about that. Instead, I started in the hand quilted corner and quilted that motif first.

Then I moved on to the machine quilted corner. I got a lot of practice travelling over my quilted lines, so the majority of my quilting started and ended in the seam allowance. This section was done using a walking foot. I briefly considered using free motion, but I don't have much experience with that and felt more comfortable using the walking foot.

The final step was to fill the background with the traditional grid pattern. I wanted the background to also represent both modern and traditional styles, so I used a mix of hand and machine quilting.


With the quilting done, it was time to finish the edges of my mini. I decided to use the back as the presentation side in case the pencil marks didn't wash out. And since the design is symmetrical and abstract, it really doesn't matter which side it's viewed from.

I bound the edges, added some pockets for hanging purposes, and my first summer mini quilt was finished!

VA, Wholecloth Mini Quilt, 2021, 11 ¼" x 11 ¼", muslin, cotton thread, and poly-cotton batting.


Friends, I really love how it turned out! The motif is sort of abstract, but also looks celestial, like a sun and earth, so it can be interpreted many different ways. My hand quilting turned out really amazing! I barely missed any stitches on the back (which is now the front) and my machine travelling stitches turned out really accurately and hardly added any bulk.



I really wanted to try finishing the edges using facing rather than binding, but I realized that I don't know how to do that on a quilt, so next week, I'll be following the facing prompt! There's a good chance I might end up using facing several times throughout the summer, so I want to learn about it early on!


For any of you who have been working on your own Summer 2021 Mini Quilts, feel free to post pictures of your week 1 creation in the comments below! You can also share them on social media, be sure to use the #summer2021miniquilts tag so everyone can find them! I will be using that tag to share progress photos on Instagram @vafibrearts if you'd like to visit me there!


If you're interested in joining this challenge, check out the challenge announcement post for rules and a full list of prompts. Remember that you can set your own schedule and change the prompts to feature new techniques from your own bucket list if you'd prefer!


As always Friends, thank you so much for visiting me this week! If you'd like to learn more about wholecloth quilts, check out my references below, and if you learn anything that I didn't mention here, feel free to share it with me! I love learning more about quilting and fibre arts techniques!


Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

VA


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