Quilt Top Finish – City of Earthly Delights

This City of Earthly Delights quilt top has been a journey! I was gifted these fabrics with a challenge to make something incredible way back in June 2015 by Kathy at Material Obsession. As I first reported in Sunday Stash #130, I struck up a conversation with Kathy at a quilt show. I started to mention that tone-on-tone blenders were more my thing, and she back handed me with a large-scale multi-coloured fabric called The Garden of Earthly Delights designed by Kit Miles. “This is what your sophisticated soul should be using.” I went to apologise, instead suggesting some solids, and she then proceeded to whip me with a selection from Alison Glass’s Handcrafted range. That’s a true fabric friend, right?! 

Anyway, after much starting and stopping over the years, it finally got here. Trust that there were many here, there and everywheres that led me to this final version! You can see some preliminary work at the #CityOfEarthlyDelightsQuilt on my Instagram. I don’t think I was ready to make this quilt–in both skills and perspective–when I started it. I’ve learned over the years that quilts will often tell me when they’re ready, not the other way around. I have to be open to listening to the fabric and my inner dialogue to produce great results.

This quilt started with the idea of my own emigration from a small, country town to the big, bright but sinful city. Through that journey there were temptations, entanglements, and freedoms that shaped my lived experience. As I picked up this work more recently, the pandemic was also weighing on my mind. The developing lockdowns throughout the world, in both rural and urban areas, became symbolic of a stasis ready to burst back open. That felt like my own life as young person—isolated but knowing in the distance there was freedom. Esoteric much? I know. 

The quilt top is all paper pieced with some meticulous fussy cutting happening in the cityscape. That glorious fabric is Big City in mint by Alexander Henry. I’m pretty sure I’m going to quilt this one myself, with some trapunto action happening across the iron gating that runs across the quilt. I’ve got the quilt back already made, so I best get to work! A quilter’s work never ends! I’m extremely proud of where this quilt has taken me, and excited by the places it will allow me to go next.