The Library at Midnight Quilt

Ever wonder what happens in a library at midnight, when the whole house sleeps? Come, find out!

Long ago, I saw a delightful ‘Library at Night’ quilt on Pinterest; the quilter was not mentioned. I had been wanting to make my version of it ever since, and got an opportunity when my late cousin’s wife requested a quilt for her three-year old granddaughter AS! I suggested this idea to her and she loved it. I took her list of the books she would like AS to read and got working.

I searched for original/ classic or most popular editions of these books online, so that I could make the spines authentic. I started by painting these.

Spines painted to match original and early editions
His Dark Materials trilogy has cutouts of the letters.

I soon discovered that this was going to take forever, so I switched to printing the spines on fabric.

The Lord of The Rings Series is printed; so are the books immediately above these.

Once all the titles were done, I had to decide which characters would come alive at midnight in the library. Again, searching the illustrations in the books and their covers gave me the material needed. Here is a look at some of them!

Mother Goose was the first to come up.

Mother Goose
That profile needs no intro!
Some collaged figures and other print-outs…
Mr. Darcy is my favourite! Catherine was also good, I thought.
Manderley up in flames from behind those huge wrought-iron gates…

You get the general idea! Finally, all the books and their sleepless characters were ready to be put together.

Experimenting with placement of the books

Once that was done, I raw-edge appliqued all the pieces to the background, shelf by shelf. Then came the quilting. I decided on a wood grain for the wooden book-shelf.

Here is a look at some more of the characters, now quilted.

Don’t you love where the sidewalk ends?
Some more characters who emerge to have a midnight bash!
Any guesses which book is flying open under the Brown Bear and Sam I Am?

My cousin wanted some Indian classics, so the Mahabharata and Ramayana were a must! From the Mahabharata I chose Draupadi appealing to ShriKrishna as she was disrobed, while the flute and peacock feather on the top shelf represented Him.

I even made a gold-framed portrait of my dear cousin, the little recipient’s grandfather, to be placed on a shelf in the quilt. But his wife wanted it for herself, so it became a gift for her, instead.

Finally, the quilt was done but for the borders

A border with a wall-paper vibe…

And it is done!

Done? I don’t like the empty corner on the left of the bottom shelf

That is better! The dedication from the grandmother also goes to the bottom shelf.

Zoom in to see how many characters you are friends with!
Perhaps this will give you a closer look.

That was the story of the Library that came alive at Midnight! I hope you enjoyed it and that it inspires you to make something similar.

Happy Quilting!

Grandma’s Spring Garden for a Gardening Friend!

A grandmother’s spring garden quilt with hexagon rosettes inspired by a Di Ford pattern!

From 2023 comes this quilt started very ambitiously but…somewhere along the way, life happened. It is based on Di Ford’s pattern of the ‘Maggie Grace’s Garden’ quilt she made for her granddaughter, with a beautiful appliqued ‘border of hexagon flowers in baskets joined by berries forming swags’.

I started it in September 2021, carrying some hexagons with me to the Jim Corbett National Park! The hexagons in yellow, orange and green that form the basic flower, by the way, were pre-cut ones I had bought years ago when I had just decided I wanted to quilt. I cut the ones used for the centres and in the white and green pathways myself.

Sitting by the Ramganga river and piecing hexagons by hand…

Of course, one also had get up at unearthly hours to go on jungle safaris looking for tigers!

Stars strewed on the earth in the early hours of morning…

Well, we never did get to spot a tiger, though I managed to piece a few hexagons..

Hexagons in the Land of the Tiger

The project was put away, to be revived only when I joined the #100dayproject on Instagram four months later.

I actually enjoyed the hand-piecing! It gives such accuracy!

More pictures of the project in progress…

I love those colours, don’t you?
…and I am quite proud of my tiny stitches (patting myself on the back!)

Would you believe it, I finished the top in six months from when I started it! A record for me. By the way, I joined the green ‘pathways’ with the machine! It worked out quite neat.

Pretty, pretty!
The top finished in six months!

But…yes of course, the path of the true quilter couldn’t ever be that smooth, right? What intervened was a lo…ong visit to the USA followed by an uprooting as we moved from Jaipur to Bangalore! Another year passed! When I finally found time to pick up the quilt, there was pending an appliqued border with over 300 tiny circles, if I remember correctly. I decided to make 3/4” yo-yos instead!

Yo-yos for the border

I was also looking for a green striped fabric for the border. The fabric I ordered turned out to be not quite the shade I wanted. And now I needed a quilt, fast, for a friend I would be visiting soon. So I settled for the Jaipuri white on white block print that I had used in the blocks.

The yo-yos were put aside and the white border looked so…bare. Perhaps this scallop that Di Ford recommends would help?

A scallop between the hexagons and the plain border

Not bad, eh?

Actually, I quite like the white border. It makes everything so summery!

No time to do quilting either! My quilter friend Vatsala from Tsala Studio came to my rescue. And she did a great job.

Simple echo quilting…
Some great texture
Pretty, pretty!
Vatsala even found me the perfect backing

The finished quilt, bar the binding…

I love the way the piano keys quilting on the border mimics the stripes I was looking for

The quilt was bound and ready just in time to travel all the way to London.

The quilt in my friend’s garden…
Bound and ready for my dear friend

My friend, who is an avid gardener, loved her spring garden quilt!

The quilt in its new home…

Some pictures of her beautiful English garden!

The quilt’s new home
Look how it blooms…
Perfect home for that quilt, wouldn’t you say?
A happy quilt!

The perfect home for this quilt, wouldn’t you say? My friend also loves the garden she can cuddle in, when her backyard gets buried under snow…

(So that catches up with one more finished quilt.)

The ‘Totally Mads’ Nearly Insane Quilt —Completed!

This quilt, popularly known as the ‘Nearly Insane’, is based on the 1860s quilt by Salinda Rupp, with 98 blocks measuring 6” square. The block patterns are available on my store patchworkofmylife.

Continuing to update my blog with the quilts finished over the last few years, comes the one that drew me to quilting in the first place.

It took me nearly 10 years to complete!

This quilt was the background theme of my quilting life for over ten years, before I finished it last year. So after yet another year, here finally are the pictures of my completed quilt. Also enjoy some trivia about the original quilt, made by the Pennsylvania resident, Salinda Rupp in the 1860s, which came to be known as the Nearly Insane Quilt and which launched a thousand quilts!

Do you know that this quilt (not mine, but the original Salinda Rupp quilt) actually has at least two poems inspired by it? One of them you can check out here. Despite all my research on the net, I could not discover who wrote the other, titled ‘The Geometry of Grace’, so am not sure if it would be fair to share it here.

As for my quilt, which I call ‘Totally Mads’ , the colours were inspired by Jaipur blue pottery.

Jaipur blue pottery ( image not mine— from the web)
The average number of pieces in each block are between 35-40

It has over 5600 pieces, including the borders and sashing!

The most intricate block has 229 pieces in a six inch square!

Most people prefer to English paper piece it or piece it by hand, because the pieces are so tiny. I decided to draft patterns to foundation paper piece it by machine.

When actually quilting it, I used the quilt-as-you-go (QAYG) method, best suited to my sit-down Husqavarna Viking Topaz 30. Because the squares are on-point, I had to be innovative about the panels. I decided on a total of nine panels, but had to add four for the borders because of the way blocks joined up…

The quilt back! The centre blue square actually has 5 QAYG panels. The four yellow corners are again separate QAYG panels.

The original quilt finishes at 88” x 88” but I added and extra border to increase the size.

The extra border and the flanged binding.

I have used a double batting, one a bamboo and the other cotton. The quilt weighs a ton now! Lesson learnt— never again, especially for a quilt where the top is already so heavy because of the enormous number of pieces. (This also explains why I have no full frontal picture of the quilt!)

The other thing that irks me ( but I refuse to do anything about it) is that the borders are not as heavily quilted as the rest of the top, so they kind of ‘hang loose’.

This video might give you a better look at the quilt.

A closer look at the quilt…

Hope you enjoyed that!

From yet another angle!

P.S I have realised that my block-wise record of the quilt was also not completed, so I shall do that in subsequent posts, for those of you who want to jump into this extremely soul-satisfying (and yet at times exasperating) project.

Like I mentioned, the patterns are available on my store!

Falling in Love — A Portrait Quilt

A portrait quilt—all in colour—of a joyful young couple, using fabric collage against a pieced background, with lots of thread-painting.

Last year, a dear friend entrusted me with the task of making a wedding anniversary gift for her daughter (whom I shall simply call A). It was to be a portrait of A and her husband, to be called, what else, H!

I chose to combine two pictures, taking the gorgeous couple’s faces and figures from one and placing them against a background of a yellow maple tree during fall. The couple had met and fallen in love in Canada, so this seemed only appropriate!

The quilt which turned out to be much more difficult than what I had envisaged. For one, both of my subjects were smiling broadly!

That gorgeous smile!
H’s smile Falling in Love portrait quilt

H’ s eyes were behind his glasses and getting that shading right is always a problem.

Details of the thread painting!

H had a delightful dimple, but how do I portray that in a fabric collage? Not to forget getting that beard right.

The full face —with the dimple!

Then there was A’s beautiful long shiny, silky hair with highlights in reds, auburn like the colours of fall around her!

Glowing with happiness!

Let us not forget the clothes and the accessories.

Details of A’s leather jacket with its zipper
The Adidas strap!

The maple tree in the background was not easy!

The maple tree in fall—I appliquéd some branches and leaf cut-outs randomly on the pieced background

I wanted to show some sunlight peeping through the tree, to reflect the joy on this couple’s face.

The sky peeps out from between the yellow leaves.

Despite the long, long hours it took, it was all worth it and I had quite a sense of satisfaction and achievement when it was finally done! ( I do not recall exactly the dimensions of the quilt, but I vaguely remember it was about 32” x 40”)

So I now leave you with a couple of videos of the quilt.

Falling in Love— the gorgeous couple! May they continue to smile together lifetime after lifetime!

I hope A and H love the quilt as much as I enjoyed making it.

The Poncho Girl – A Portrait of Tana

A Portrait Quilt

I am overwhelmed with emotion when I try to write anything about this portrait of my daughter…I will try to just stick to photos of how it was done!

This photo, so quintessentially my Tana, was my inspiration for the quilt! I started working on it in January 2022, about a year from when she passed on.

Vectorization done on the Vector Q app

The collage came up pretty quickly!

What followed were a couple of trips—one exploring Rajasthan and another one in to Gujarat! Finally got back to working on it, hoping to finish it by her birthday in April!

Sadly, didn’t feel quite done on her birthday. Needed a lot of more quilting to add depth to it!

( Note that I am trying ‘contour quilting’ quilting on it, where the quilting follows the face contours)

This looks better, right? But I don’t like the way some of the lighter threads stand out against the darker areas! Gives it a harsh look! Not for my gentle darling, it wouldn’t do!

I used Inktense pencils to reduce contrast in the in-between areas and darken some stitching lines so that the threads matched the fabric!

Tip: A bit of Cadmium Orange or Burnt Orange does wonders to soften harsh contrasts in portraits, especially with our Indian skin types! It is great for lip-colour too!

A close-up of her smile

See the Inktense at work!!

The hair…

Were those the most beautiful eyes in the world that mirrored the purest soul that ever lived?

I cut out a poncho I had made for her and used it to dress her! The flowers and leaves were also cut out from the poncho.

The quilt was mounted on a ( mounted) canvas, which makes it easy to hang. It now lives in my living room where I can look at her while watching TV…

…or touch her, talk to her, smile at her every time I walk past her!

She smiles right back!

So that is my Tana in her poncho!