The Strata Quilt

This is Strata.

This was one humongous quilt! Mr M & his wife saw a picture of a quilt they liked and asked if I could make it, pretty similar but it needed to be a portrait orientation rather than square. The original was a quilt made by Ann Brauer, who does a vast amount of strata-type quilts. This was my first effort with one so big. I have done similar, much smaller pieces, but they wanted this to be approximately 2m wide and 3m tall (about 6ft x 9ft).  I decided that batiks were the best way to get the variation of colours I wanted.

Breaking down the quilt into manageable 6.5″ squares, I had a closer look at different techniques of strip piecing & decided to work with strips that were  1″ x 7″.  About 2800 of them. After what seemed like endless cutting (thanks to the help from DD!), I was ready to begin. And by the way, I didn’t have enough variation in the greens and had to cut more later. 😀

Each block had about 11 strips. I had to put it on the design wall in sections because the whole thing wasn’t going to go up there before piecing.

I’d say the hardest part for me was making sure each section blended to the next properly but they were meant to be a bit wonky to add to the depth so that cut down on the stress of having to match a bajillion seams.

This was the completed top, hung from near the top of the wall in my flat. It’s draped over the sofa because it wouldn’t have been able to hang straight down.

Once together, it was time to choose some beautiful Aurifil threads for the quilting. I kept that simple because it would have been totally lost on all those patterns.

A binding wasn’t needed since more like a knife-edge was desired so I put it together with the top, backing & a Quilters Dream mid-loft polyester batting in a pillowcase method. After turning the quilt right sides out, I quilted across & quite close to the edges to close them. Add hanging sleeves and voilà, she was done.

Mr M was kind enough to send me a photo of Strata in her designated space.

In the end, they moved it down a bit more but it’s interesting to see the perspective with the full size of the wall. A wall that size most certainly needed a large piece of artwork. And a piece of artwork that size creates A LOT of little trimmings. So what to do with these?

Thanks to the wonderful internet, I was led to this cute & simple tutorial to make ornaments from fabric strings & selvedges. These turned out quite cute.

I’ve made a few of them and I thought I was going to have enough to share. But I should have known better. They’ve been appropriated by the kids.  😀

Happy Quilting!