When Natima and I get together for a sewfest she always has something creative waiting for us to do. This time it was a Siddhi (City) quilt. She told me that the women in the markets in India sat in the middle of the quilt and sewed the pieces on by hand working their way around in the quilt from the outside to the inside. The photos above and below show the process. You actually start by doing all the corners first then work around the outside.
Here is the process at the beginning of the quilt. The wadding (cobbled together leftover pieces) is laid out and backed with old sari silk folded over the front a few inches and then tacked onto the front to hold it in place. Tassles are roughly made by folding squares into triangles stitching them together and attaching them to each corner. I'm told the quilt is not finished unless this has been done.
Here is the finished product. It has all been done by hand with a running stitch and by folding over and ironing two edges of each piece of fabric. The running stitch which joins the pieces also serves the double purpose of quilting the quilt. I think it would also be very easy and much quicker to sew the pieces onto the wadding by machine. However I did enjoy this small hand stitched project very much. Hand stitching has its own kind of rhythm and pleasure.
I chose to have a theme of "rich" colours
Here is a closeup of the result. This quilt makes me feel happy because the colours give me pleasure and because it's a scrap quilt.
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