Quilt Finish – Balance

I need to throw another finish into the quiltosphere! I started this quilt four-and-a-half years ago with absolutely zero intention except to play with fabric. I usually find myself gravitating towards fabric play after a lot of paper piecing, or other techniques that require intense focus. It’s that moment where you just need to grab your rotary cutter and start chopping things up! This is basically how I feel about all of 2020 and 2021! While the fabric play released some tension, it certainly took its damn time in coming to a finished quilt.

A few months prior, I had created the custom Pattern Please Fabric Bundle for an online quilt shop. It contained a coordinating set of fabrics by Tula Pink, Joel Dewberry and Zandra Rhodes all focused on variously scaled prints, with high saturation levels, and as the title indicated, a whole lot of pattern. I knew the colour way was fire, but was quite unsure if I’d be able to make these prints dance together. It felt like every junior high school semi-formal I ever went to while hugging the wall and ever so much wanting to dance like no one was watching.

As I started creating strip pieces, and then bordering them with Art Gallery Pure solids in Cabernet and Snow, irregular triangles started to form. As I said, I had no real plan, so I just went with it, figuring something would emerge along the way.

At one point I started to see a skull–which is kind of still there in the very middle if you squint while wearing drag queen eye lashes. (Ask me how I know!) So I was like, well, I didn’t really think I was making a skull, but if that’s what it wants to be, let’s proceed. I eventually got most of the strip sets and triangles sewn together into the most awkwardest of shapes and the skull idea began to fade away. However, it was now nowhere near being square or rectangular in shape, so I wadded it up and threw it in the WIP pile in frustration for another day.

Well you know how that goes, suddenly it’s years later and you’re digging through a pile of fabric to find that WIP you hadn’t thought about in forever-ever. (By the way, if you haven’t watched Girls 5Eva, get on to that!) When it went back up on the design wall, I just had the strongest intention to finish it into something. My brain was stewing, the patterns were hurting my eyes as there was no negative space, and the now distance skull idea was no longer pressing. That’s when I looked at it one night and said, “It looks like how I feel.”

With that, I began to add more random strips, scraps, and triangles to capture all of that pattern into a contained and pressurised unit. I knew it wouldn’t be square, but suddenly the idea of pressurised containment made a lot of sense to me. In essence, this is basically my brain at any given moment of the day or night. For a while I thought I’d be making a skull, only to find out it was my own skull that was staring back at me. I guess what ended up happening is a self-portrait of sorts!

When I had finished the large section into a chalice-like shape, I had one pre-made strip set triangle left over. Throwing it back onto the design wall, it became clear where it was meant to go. Suddenly, the whole concept of the quilt made sense. My brain constantly gurgling away, delicately balanced on the rest of my body, my life, my entire experience. That singular fulcrum acting as the weakest and strongest point of my whole humanity.

As the design fell into place (finally!), the rest of the construction was relatively quick in comparison. I filled the background haphazardly, making gross guestimations about the sizes and shapes required to eventually turn this blob into a more regular quilt shape. Let’s just say there were a lot of off-cuts left on the studio floor! As for the backing, I used a lovely piece of Echino cotton sateen, combined with–I believe–Kona Wasabi, to make the quilt reversible. You know, for those days that I don’t like being reminded of my over-combustible brain.

That’s the story of a quilt called, Balance. I don’t expect the constant Broadway production going off in my head to slow down, but at least I know I have a creative outlet like quilting to keep it from imploding. It may teeter and it may tot, but there’s a pivotal foundation, and I couldn’t imagine it any other way!

I also thought I’d include this outtake photo just so you can see outside the crop.

Title: Balance
Size: 57″ x 60″
Pattern: Molli Sparkles, improvisational piecing
Fabric: Mixture of Tula Pink, Joel Dewberry and Zandra Rhodes fabrics
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 50wt, 2024 White
Quilting: Long arm quilting by Leanne Harvey of Mount Vincent Quilts
Binding: Hand stitched with Aurifil 40wt, 1240 Very Dark Eggplant
Backing: Echino cotton sateen and Kona solid
Timing: November 2016 – May 2021
Favourite Part: It’s a quilt that says way more than it was ever meant to say.