Thursday, January 24, 2013

A "Shiny" Quilt Top


This unfinished quilt top was in with the donated fabric we needed to sort at Saturday's gathering of our Victory Quilt ministry.
It looks like it's mostly rayon acetate with some occasional patches of silk.  All the patches are rectangular.  It was pieced by machine, and then the maker hand stitched a running stitch along the edges of some of the patches.
 I'm thinking it could be layered with a cotton backing and fusible batting and machine quilted.  I'm wondering if anyone else has tried something like this, and, if so, were there any pitfalls or recommendations.  We have no idea who donated it (people frequently just leave things for us), so I doubt that we'll ever know whose work this is, but I'd like to make it into a quilt if that's feasible.

This top is small enough to be quilted fairly easily on a domestic sewing machine.

Comments more than welcome!


Happy quiltmaking,.....

10 comments:

bunbear said...

what a pretty piece! i'm curious to see what kind of answers you get about quilting it. i have some silky fabrics that i would love to make a top out of. i would want to quilt them on the machine, but don't really know how that would work.

hope you are staying warm where you are. we are at 13 degrees here right now. brrr.

doodlebugmom said...

Very pretty! Glad to see you posting again :)

The Slow Quilter said...

The colors and fabric are lovely, but I never worked with that type of fabric. Good luck in quilting it and I hope that you let us all see it when you finish.

Rosemary Dickinson said...

It looks so pretty no matter what type of fabric it is. Would love to see what you end up doing with it. Nice to have you back!

O'Quilts said...

I never work on anything slippery like that without spray basting.

Lynn said...

Imagine your quilting would look amazing on this shiny fabric! I'm saving silk dresses and blouses to "repurpose" one of these days . Goo forth, and inspire us!

Cindy Sharp said...

I see no reason why you couldn't quilt it as you would any other top. You might consider using a smaller needle....to limit the size of the hole it creates. Other than that the real test would come when it is time to wash it.

Carol said...

This piece is so soft and luxurious. I can't help you since I'm looking for information on doing a silk dupioni quilt, so I'll keep watching what you do with this.

Jake said...

I've used silk as a backing fabric for a top that was pieced out of rayon (not by me, it was a donated top too). The rayon piecing had been pieced onto a piece of muslin, but it was so beautiful I backed it with a piece of silk I had laying around. I used cotton batting but just pin basted. I used cotton thread, 50 wt, and a microtex (purple) needle. It was just a 60" square quilt so it was not very large. It FMQed like a dream.....all that silk on the back made it really slip thru the machine easier than regular cotton. Good luck!

Cheryl's Teapots2Quilting said...

People used to make silk and taffeta quilts. Unfortunately, those materials just don't last as long as cottons do. I've been wanting to make a crazy quilt, using silks, taffeta and velvets. Nice colors they chose. Why not use it. Baste it well, since those fabrics slide easier than cottons do.

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