redecorating

Last year we started on a project to redecorate the house. That project has only a few final touches to go, and this quilt for the guest room is one of them.  To go with a deeper color paint, I made a white silk-cotton blend whole cloth (Robert Kaufman Radiance - pieced to make it cover a queen-size mattress). 

When we started to photograph the quilt hanging up outside, the air was still and the sky cloudless so no time to work on the wrinkles that set in overnight.  (unfortunately, the weather conditions didn't last.)

For the center of the quilt, I used an applique design from Kitty Pippen's Asian Elegance: Quilting with Japanese Fabrics and More.  I had to do in quilting what that design did with color so I chose to quilt the backgrounds much more densely than she did in her quilt.  I made the Hawk Feathers (the chevons seen below) with varying widths of stripes to resemble the different striped fabrics she pieced.

Here are a couple more views of that center panel with dogwoods and stylized hawk feathers.

I didn't relate to the mandarin ducks in the original design, and substituted cranes from a Dover publication.  Here they are a little closer up, standing in water.

Once I had the center quilted, I did two borders with sashiko-based designs - combining clamshells and orange peels (called Seven Treasures of Buddha by the sashiko artists) for the first. Those were easy to quilt. The Ocean Waves (the diamond pattern) was much harder and what I spent more time on than the rest of the quilt put together.  Or maybe I just spent more time dragging my feet on that part?

So as not to have to worry about making the Ocean Waves pattern turn corners and keep it facing right-side up where it falls off the bed on the sides and at the foot, I used a flower design from the same Dover book the cranes came from as a cornerstone.

 The top and bottom border are a Summa Designs pantograph wave pattern with some free motion, and the sides are a Hermione Agee feather panto based on the clam shell. By the time I got to those last borders, I was tired of working on the diamond pattern, and that allowed me to get the quilt off the machine.

Here are two views of the room nearly finished.

Norris made new nightstands to fit the room. The photo above was taken while the drawer was in the garage (modelling for the nearly finished second one).  He'd probably like us to show the real thing (below photo taken before the new lamps and mirrors showed up)  The drawer fronts are ambrosia maple (sorry for the lousy photo taken with my cell phone.)

In case you wonder why our mountain house has this Japanese-themed quilt, this is the fabric we chose to reupholster the chair with - 

I just said, "Clamshells - I can go with that."