An African fabric quilt from the start.......

If you have read many earlier posts you will know that it's the fabric that sets my creative juices going and that I will often start a piece with little idea of how it may be concluded!

I have set myself the challenge this year to try and design a quilt, with a size and defined elements before I start to do any work! I did start with two lengths of fabric sourced from the Festival of Quilts in August 2014 and I thought I would share that process with you.

The fabric, cotton, hand dyed and printed and resist printed by Esther from Ghana and bought from Maggie Relph and The African Fabric shop and a hand dyed piece from Heidi Stoll-Weber. They absolutely sang to me. That was the beginning, I had no idea how I would use them.

Initially I thought about an idea based on the wonderful Rudbeckia flowers, but my poor drawing skills put me off and I went down a more abstract, geometric route. I really did try out a raft of design possibilities.

The very abstract nature of the fabric made it hard to replicate in coloured pencil!

I tried photocopying the fabric so that I could create collaged ideas to give a better indication of how the final quilt would look. This was a very helpful move and one I'll use again. All of this before I cut or stitched any fabric!

Even after all of this I was still not convinced I had found the right ideas, back to the drawing board. More to follow.