Happy May Day Quilt!
The school my children attend usually hosts a May Day Festival on the first Saturday in May. Sadly, last year and this year it had to be cancelled because gathering in groups (even outside) isn’t a good idea quite yet. So no May Pole dance for the school to celebrate the coming summer.
The May Pole partially wrapped with beautiful ribbons by the eighth grade. Photo courtesy of Ana Moreno.
As part of the May Day Festival, the fundraising organization affiliated with the school usually holds an Art Auction. This is a fun event, with each class working together to create a piece for the auction. Many times, the items reflect an aspect of the curriculum that the class has studied that year - for example, third grade learns about various types of shelters, and in the past they have made a chicken coop or a dog house.
The center panel of this quilt is raw edge applique based on a photograph by Susan Skinner.
This year the Art Auction has gone virtual and will be held online. I love supporting local organizations that I believe in, so I was inspired to create a quilt to donate for the fundraiser and started brainstorming ideas. My first inspiration was to use a photo of the May Pole Dance to create either an art quilt or a central panel for a lap quilt. I’d done this a few times before and really enjoyed the process and the results.
I’m not one for taking photos during events (I find that I get too distracted by the camera and end up looking at the viewscreen instead of being in the moment), so I asked my friend and photographer extraordinare Ana to share with me her photos of prior May Days. I picked out a photo to use and started enlarging it, ready to trace out the shapes I’d use for the applique.
I found a block called Maypole Dance and decided I was going to use it around the central panel to make it a lap quilt. I even went as far as to use my graph paper notebook to plan out how the blocks would sit around the panel, but this lead me to realise that with the size of the photo panel and the blocks that I’d need sashing. Oh wait, I could use a light brown fabric for the sashing, quilt it with a wood grain pattern, and it would be look like the Maypole!
That switched on another light bulb and at that point I decided to make one larger, lap quilt out of the Maypole Dance blocks and “wood” sashing and one smaller, art quilt based on the photograph. I turned the page in my notebook and graphed out another version of the quilt, and started making blocks.
I decided that one piece of “wooden” Maypole in the center, with the blocks in a pattern on either side (inspired by the pattern in the photo of the Maypole above) was the way to go. But then I needed to represent the flowers at the top of the pole and the beautiful blue sky, so I paper pieced a “bouquet” for the top. Fortunately I came to my senses and chose not to add the green grass along the bottom, as that would have been a bit too much! The photos below are while it was hanging on my design wall in my studio, at night - the squares that look black are actually a rich purple.
I finished piecing and put it on the longarm with a flannel backing (so soft and snuggly!) I chose a pattern called May Day to do an edge 2 edge design through the “ribbon” blocks, put wood grain in the “Maypole”, an bouquet of roses in the flowers, and windy swooshes in the blue sky. I had intended to load it sideways and quilt it in the above order, but I initially loaded it upright. I didn’t want to take it off and re-load it so I went ahead and quilted the swooshes and the bouquet first, and then turned it for the rest. That didn’t work out so well and I had a bit of a bump between the ribbons and the sky, so I ended up having to un-pick half of the swooshes and the bouquet and re-quilt them. It was a good lesson to learn, though! By not taking the time to re-load the quilt I gave myself extra work unpicking and re-quilting.
While Gambit was working on the quilting, I used my Bernina to embroider a label for the quilt and assembled a bias binding. Once the quilting was complete, I attached the binding on the front and then sewed it on the back by hand while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I sewed the label on the back and it’s done, ready to be bid on in the auction that will take place next Saturday, May 8th! Check out http://goldenvalleyedfund.org/ to see what’s available (as of May 1st the quilt is not up on the website, but it will be added soon!)
