Quilt Finish – City of Earthly Delights

This small quilt has been a long time coming, and she’s finally ready to make her grand debut! I started City of Earthly Delights as a fabric challenge instigated by Kathy Doughty of Material Obsession back in June 2015. At the time, I was coming off the high that was the success of my No Value Does Not Equal Free quilt. If you remember, aesthetically, that quilt was completely white. Kathy’s signature style is at the other end of the bohemian spectrum, and she dared me to dip my delicate little toes into her fabric waters. I couldn’t resist, especially when she taunted me with the fabrics presented in Sunday Stash #130 from Alison Glass and Kit Miles. I then topped these up by adding a major feature print called Big City in mint by Alexander Henry. How could I make these disparate fabrics work together? Despite the six-and-a-half years from start to finish, the narrative of this quilt came quite easily.

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. I was keenly aware of them, but I also had to be wary of them. As I moved forward with this quilt more recently, the pandemic 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. Ultimately, living in the unknown as it evolves around you brings feelings of both wonder and fear. That is the knife’s edge of what this quilt is about.

I sketched several ideas for this quilt. Aesthetically, they all centred around the motifs of the city being overrun by parasitic botanicals, and then iron bars creating a barrier to the viewer. The quilt was going to be a larger, sprawling affair, but I edited it down to keep focus on the central themes. The whole quilt is built around three block shapes set on the grid. You can see in the photo below: kite block, triangle in square block, and square block each measuring 4″ finished. I used foundation paper piecing to construct these individual blocks with the fabric positioned exactly how I wanted it.

When it came time to cut up the cityscape panel and re-piece it to create the illusion of continuity, I used template plastic to fussy cut each piece as accurately as possible. I’m especially happy with how good the city looks! There are some seam alignments that are meticulously actioned, and others that just happened by chance. Either way, they all came together without losing the original essence of the panel.

Originally, I was going to quilt this myself. However, as I was packaging up other quilts to send to Leanne of Mount Vincent Quilts, I ended up throwing this one in as well. Let’s face it, I’m definitely more of a topper, than a quilter. It doesn’t mean I can’t do it, I just don’t enjoy it as much. (Oh, the irony.) I also tend to prefer the finished look of a long armed quilt over one that has been free motion quilted. So my design direction for Leanne was to outline the iron bars, and do some light outline quilting on some of the cityscape. She sent it back to me having done just that.

Except as I finished the last stitches of the binding, I realised this quilt wasn’t quite done with me yet. I’ve said this before, but I spend a lot of time listening to my quilts. As I’m creating, inspiration continues to come, and designs often shift and change. Well, City of Earthly Delights was telling me that I needed to get my hands dirty with some additional FMQ. So I ordered some additional Aurifil threads from Amitie Textiles, unstitched half of the binding, and got to work.

First, I added a bit more outlining to the cityscape so that more buildings came into shape. I also started outlining some of the red, orange and yellow shapes that were dappled around the iron bars. The fabric I used for the iron bars (representing an omnipresent gate or containment) is made from Alison Glass’s Handmade batik-like range. This particular fabric naturally has these flying geese shapes that I had fussy cut and positioned so that it felt like the vinery was coming through from behind. I outlined only some of them to create more definition, while there are a few quilted ghost shapes scattered about as well.

The original design intent was for the iron gates to be growing over the garden and city. As I previously suggested that this could be about containment, the viewer could also read it as a protective barrier. I guess it depends on which side of the fence you’re on! Well, I wanted the quilting to aid in this idea of the iron growing just like the garden is, so I added some ghost quilting for where additional iron bars would be placed. Finally, I needed the city to be on fire. As our known world burns around us from the inside out, the beauty of earthly delights will now crumble and fall as ash–for better, or for worse. Metaphorically, the city has become the phoenix.

If nothing else, I buried a helluva lot of threads for all the extra quilting! The backing is made from stashed yardage of Joel Dewberry’s True Colours Herringbone Yellow and the leftover Alison Glass Handcrafted batik. By using this small intact piece on the back, you can really see how fabric can be manipulated to create entirely different designs. While this quilt is only 44″ x 44″ it took its own sweet time coming into fruition. It allowed its magic to be interspersed throughout the last six years of my life, so that I could use my evolving skills to make it truly what it needed to be. City of Earthly Delights began with telling the story of a single boy, and it’s ended with telling the story of us all.

Title: City of Earthly Delights
Size: 44″ x 44″
Pattern: Molli Sparkles design
Fabric: Alison Glass Handcrafted, Studio KM’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Alexander Henry Big City
Piecing: Machine stitched on Juki TL-98P with Aurifil 50wt, White 2024
Quilting: Long arm stitch in the ditch quilting by Mount Vincent Quilts, additional FMQ by Molli Sparkles
Binding: Hand stitched with Aurifil 40wt, Medium Grey 1158
Backing: Joel Dewberry True Colours Herringbone Yellow and Alison Glass Handcrafted
Timing: June 2015 – November 2021
Favourite Part: Using paper piecing like a boss to match up that cityscape fabric.