Vlieseline were kind enough to send me some of their Soya Mix wadding to try out for the first time. I love natural fibres, using 100% cotton a lot of the time, so I was keen to give this a go. Obviously, I needed to make a quilt to try with it, but what?
At the Festival of Quilts 2021 I got chatting with Abigail Sheridan de Graaff, winner of the Modern Quilt category and she suggested I have a go at this section of our art form. I’m normally a traditional quilter so was quite inspired by this challenge.
I decided to take inspiration from traditional Welsh frame quilts using a distinctive and bold black and red coulourway. The quilt design came together quickly with large Flying Geese and blocks of black set against the red of my chosen background. But how to quilt it?
This was my first foray into Modern but I wanted to use the same influence from the old Welsh quilts. A Celtic Knot pattern, repeated in both the black sections and on the red of the background. It was quite closely quilted and I’d used a walking foot to ensure I kept the lines straight.
But let’s now turn to how the wadding performed. It has a lovely, soft feel to it and drapes beautifully. The denser quilting I used does make this quite a rigid quilt but this is a wall hanging, so this is better to help hold it flat. Now, most Modern quilts are very flat so I’m guessing that not many people wash their modern quilts. I chose to thinking I wanted to get a little shrinkage – that wrinkled ‘aged’ look as this was part of the inspiration. What I didn’t expect was quite how much this did shrink. More that other waddings I normal use but this does not mean that I didn’t like it. It certainly gives the quilt an antiqued look.
Overall this wadding is easy to work with, little to no bearding which was is beneficial when working with black and softly draping. The shrinkage was more than I expected but this is not something which bothers me. I will certainly use this again, especially if I want a rustic, antiqued look.
Strictly Quilting 