I had the opportunity to teach at the MQX Quilt Festival – New England 2013 in Manchester, NH. There was a lot of great energy at the conference and the students in all of my classes were great.
As a faculty member I was asked to award a “Faculty Ribbon” to one of the quilts in the show. There were a lot of wonderful quilts that were entered but one of them popped out of the crowd. That one is Roy G. Biv’s Dresden by Maddie Kertay of Chattanooga, TN.
This is what she said about the quilt on the card that accompanied the quilt in the show:
- Roy G. Biv is a love story … one created from whole cloth, colored thread and inktense pencil work. A freehand flight of fancy straight from the fanciful core of my brain 100% hand-guided machine quilting.
It is a whole cloth quilt (white fabric on the front, black on the back). Various colored threads were used to create the complex design.
Everywhere you looked there seemed to be something else to draw you into the design.
I asked Maddie a few questions about her the quilt. It is always interesting to see how other people create. Check out more of Maddie’s work at Bad Ass Quilters Society.
How did you come up with the idea for this quilt?
- Roy started as a doodle in my design note book. I have always been an ADD girl so doodling helps me concentrate when listening.
Did you sketch out all of the quilting designs before you started – or did it evolve as you went along?
- I marked the center and bisecting lines on the fabric before putting it on the machine but after that I was flying by the seat of my pants. The more I doodled with thread the more I thought of my life …. my luck in having an amazing husband …. Out of there grew the tree with the initials and the hearts for each of our six kids. The dove has to do with the loss of our son Gabriel and a story that goes with that. But over all this a quilt of joy and a celebration of thread on fabric and what it can do
- I used blue pen for the few bisecting lines…nothing more … thus the “was she dropping acid when she quilted that” comment I once heard!
- There are about 30 hours of quilting in the top.
- The top was a celebration of thread. I used Glide and Magna Glide bobbins.
- I got my machine knowing nothing 3 years ago and had no lessons. I was a lucky girl to by an HQ Story girl just weeks after getting my machine.
- My quilting is about expression not perfection. I think that there is room for many different ways to think about quilting. Mind you some of these do not gel all that well with the quilt-show establishment!
