So I finished my wool quilt, named it “Moth Buffet”, drafted up the brief statement needed, re-read all the directions one last time, and sent in my entry with fingers X.
One of the entry requirements is that what’s visible on each side of the quilt must be at least 60% wool. I was pretty sure that by making the hanging sleeve out of the black coat fabric (70% wool) ensures the back side complies, but to be quite certain I added a couple of ~15cm black patches to the larger red (50%wool) sections. It’s an unusual layout for me, I know – but remember, both black and red fabrics came from unpicking two old wool coats, and the back is patched together from the most useful of what I had left.
It was quite fun to do, and I felt a bit naughty to be chopping into knitted woollen fabric. In my first post on this project I considered the role of wool in my background and why the mentality of “… but I don’t work with wool” had to be conquered.
When I was given those knitted samples, my first reaction was to unravel some of one and crochet or knit some elements to use on the work. However, my arthritic hands and lack of practice these last 30+ years soon made it obvious that approach would be needless torture. My needles these days are large hand sewing or machine ones, depending on the task at hand, and so I took a deep breath and cut into one knitted sample. The results were so exciting, the fabric unravelled beautifully, and there was no going back.
Unravelling this sample to knit, I abandoned that idea after just a few rows – but found the yarn easily separated out into 6 fine strands, and those turned out to be marvellous to stitch with.
English