Six Questions With Award Winning Eden Quilt Designer Rebecca Stewart-Bartell
We catch up with designer Rebecca Stewart-Bartell and discuss her award winning Eden Quilt design.
How did you come up with the idea for the Eden Quilt?
The theme of this year’s West Australian Quilters Association annual competition QuiltWest was “I Remember When” and to me that meant childhood memories. Most of my childhood memories involve being with family and the place where my family always comes together is at my Nanna and Pop’s house.
A few years ago they moved into a triplex unit but before that they lived in a house for more than 50 years, which had the most wonderful garden. When they sold the house, the new owners tore it down and cleared the entire block in order to put up units and now the garden is gone.
As children it was an enchanted jungle, full of mazes of trees and fields of flowers (which always got us into trouble as we would pick the flowers), birds, insects and animals everywhere. Playing in their garden with my sisters and cousins is such a happy memory that I wanted to make a quilt to honour and remember that beautiful place.
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How did you design the Eden Quilt?
I started the Eden Quilt the same way I start all of my quilts — by drawing and doodling ideas. As I was drawing bugs and flowers, the nursery rhyme “Round and round the garden like a teddy bear” kept going through my head, which I though must be a sign to put some sort of circular motif into the quilt.
So I drew up the centre circle and decided the quilt designs would go around it. Using all of the flowers and insects I had drawn, I came up with a way to weave them around the feathering and make everything flow together.
I drew up only a quarter of the design, making sure that when I repeated it that the feathers and vines would join seamlessly. That was the hardest part of the whole design. I had to make sure my maths was right. I used a compass and protractor for angles and measurements, and had to be sure everything fit and matched up correctly.
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How is the Eden Quilt constructed?
The quilt is basically a whole cloth quilt. I made it from one single large piece of a cotton silk-blend fabric. In order to quilt the design that I had created somehow, I had to get it onto the fabric. This was so that the designs and reference marks would be there for me to use in quilting it.
Once the fabric was cut down to the correct size, I divided the fabric into four equal square sections. I did this by making crease marks with my iron. I then carefully pinned the paper design to the back of the fabric, lining it up exactly with the crease lines so that it fitted exactly.
It took me five days to trace the designs onto the fabric and three water-soluble pens. I didn’t mind though as I watched a lot of TV and a few movies while I was doing it.
When the design was finished, it went onto the frame of my longarm machine (Tin Lizzie Queen Quilter). Then the quilting began! My machine is almost seven years old.
I bought it before they started putting touch screens and computerised controls on all of the machines, so it only has simple dials and switches. It’s completely hand-guided but it does have a stitch regulator so it works well for me.
The main quilting motifs, like the feathering and flowers, were quilted first. I then did the insects using a combination of metallic thread and normal thread. Last were the background fillers, which usually take the longest as I try to make them quite small in order to let the feathering pop out.
At first all of the flowers and bugs were going to be appliquéd and embroidered. However, I was running out of time to get the quilt finished for the deadline so I had to come up with another plan.
After taking a few classes years ago with Helen Stubbings, I amassed a small army of Derwent pencils. I knew this would be the perfect way to get colour into the quilt in a shorter amount of time. Once the entire quilt was quilted, the colouring started. Using my pencils, I coloured then painted textile medium on top of each flower, leaf, vine and bug one at a time.
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Did you use any specialty products?
I used a couple of special things on the Eden Quilt to make the quilting stand out. My Derwent Coloursoft pencils were one. I used them to colour in the flowers and bugs. Then, I sealed the coloured pencil with Plaid Folk Art Textile Medium. I also used Superior Metallic thread for the insects and the spiders’ webs. The rest of the quilting was done with Superior So Fine thread.
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Did it turn out how you envisaged?
The quilt turned out almost as I saw it in my head, which is pretty rare for me. I usually end up having a million ideas along the way and change things as I go. I did change the background fillers that I was originally going to use. Also, I made a scalloped binding instead of my original straight one, but other than that it looks exactly like my design drawings did.
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What awards has the Eden Quilt won?
The quilt was recently at the 2015 QuiltWest show where it won Best Longarm Quilting. I’m planning on entering it into some USA shows soon, although I’m not expecting to win anything over there. At this stage in my quilting journey I’m just hoping to be lucky enough to be juried into some of their shows.
