The Endeavourers Challenge: Spiral

It's reveal day on the Endeavourer's blog, the results of our latest challenge: Spiral.  I've written about the ideas I had and rejected, and why I chose the one I made for my project over there, so pop over to have a read if you like.  In this blog post, I thought I'd talk about the way I made my piece and some of the construction issues I had!

Didn't make this one but will for myself some day!  The first lines of some of my favourite books!

I had an idea of a quilt in two halves inspired by a Jonathon Haidt TED Talk about what liberals and conservatives and concerned with.  I decided a yin/yang style spiral could be fun, as both are needed to balance the world, but elongated it as the extremes in politics we see from both left and right can cause more harm than good and a circular yin/yang felt wrong. 

My paper pattern blown up to use as a template for cutting my spirals.

I chose shot cottons as I've had these on hand for ages and in a variety of subtle colours that I thought would work well together for an improv background.

I should have starched the living daylights out of them as there is a bit of give in them and improv cutting exposing bias gave me a few problems in getting a flat and square finished quilt.  Lesson learned!

I used freezer paper to make my spiral shapes and pressed carefully to keep flat.  It didn't quite have the impact I was going for and blended a bit too much.

So I thought outlining in white bias tape might give a bit of pop!

I added a cream centre, to represent people coming into the wold as knowing nothing and gravitating to a political position, with time and experience.  Most of us are in the centre with some moving along the arms of left and right!

In the background of the arms I quilted loops.

Spirals in the centre pieces, including a Celtic tri-spiral!

And text in the background to represent the values conservatives and liberals have like Fairness, Equality, Authority, Purity, In-Group/Community and I also added in the names we call each other like Snowflake and all things *ist.

Because of all the bias, what I thought I had trimmed square became a little wonky when bound. 

I entered it for the Irish Quilter's Showcase and it was shown in the Limerick School of Art and Design by Paula Rafferty last month.  Thanks to Paula for accepting my piece and showing a great collection of quilts on the theme of "Culture".

It was a challenge in the making as well as in the thinking and I am very glad to have tried it and pushed my skill levels a bit.  I would have liked a neater finish but in the concept, I am happy with it.  I called it "Snowflake, who me?"  I'm eager now to see what everyone else has made on the Endeavourer's blog!