This month's Aurifil Artisan challenge was to make a wholecloth quilt. I was sent fabric and thread to work with and given free reign to create. There were a few ideas swimming around my head but when we went to the Keith Haring exhibition in Liverpool recently I couldn't resist doing hand quilting inspired by his designs.


This is an incredibly playfully stitched project and there are elements I absolutely love and also some lessons learned.

I was sent solid fabric in the colour Haze, Painter's Palette Solids by Paintbrush Studio. It's one of their 2019 colours of the year and it a beautiful grey blue. It looks different in the photos because of the time of day they were taken but the one below is possibly the closest to real life. The piece I'm stitching on is about 20" square. Aurifil also sent me a spool of 12wt thread, in #2612 Artic Sky - a lovely soft grey. 


As Keith Haring's work is so colourful I added in other colours of 12wt, #4662 variegated Creme de Menthe, #1248 Grey Blue, #5022 Mustard, #2260 Red Wine, #2155 Cinnamon, #3660 variegated Bubblegum, #1125 Medium Teal and #2318 Cachemire. 
If I had to pick favourites it would be Mustard and Cinnamon, those rich warm colours are totally my vibe.

I looked back at some pictures I took while at the Tate Liverpool for inspiration. They had also given us a little booklet with some of his individual doodles and an explanation of the meaning behind them which was really cool and interesting, as well as being perfect help for this project!





Then I free handed some doodles! And I got the whole family involved. Lois drew a three eyed face, Joan drew an alien spaceship, Fred drew a heart with a cross and Mark drew a dancing couple.


My trusty water erasable pen showed up nicely on the fabric, even though it is blue. It makes it really easy to remove any marks after stitching and doesn't drag when you're drawing with it.


Let the stitching begin. 


I filled the fabric full of pattern, adding in some zig zag lines, filler doodles and my initials. Lots and lots of stitches. Aurifil 12wt thread is so easy to work with, it glides through the fabric and I had no tangles while making all these stitches. It has a heavier look than the other weights but it isn't chunky in a 'hard to work' with way. I'm not sure of the needle type I used but I think it's an embroidery needle of some kind. You don't need a huge eye as the thread is much smoother than perle cotton and I do like using finer, longer needles for most projects so I appreciate not having to use a overly big needle with the 12wt.

You can see the texture building up in this picture and I'm going to show you close up of the doodles...


the spaceship...


the dancing couple...


the three eyed face...


a computer with pentagram (nod to this blog) and a spool of thread...


the heart...


the pyramid...


the atom...


the telephone...


the three babies (each of my kids) and initials


And here's where it stops... for now. I would love to say I managed a finished project for the challenge but I didn't want to rush to bind it when I don't feel it's complete. I want to create even more texture! The thread gives a brilliant texture to the quilting and I would like to fill in all the gaps to make it more like Keith Haring's work. I added extra stitches around the babies and love the effect, so my plan is to keep on stitching. I've realised that to make it pop there needs to be more quilting in the background. The Artic Sky soft grey is working nicely as sort of background stitches around the doodle motifs so I will add more of that along with more colour to emphasise the doodles. Now I realise I underestimate how long this design would take being hand quilted but it's been so much fun working on it that I am happier doing more quilting and getting it closer to my vision. I expect this will end up being a very Over The Top quilt and that's what the aim is!