My next Christmas project is a quilt using a Charley Harper illustration from “The Giant Golden Book of Biology,” published in 1961 (now out of print and very rare). The image was scanned at a high resolution from my Todd Oldham book, “Charley Harper – An Illustrated Life,” a Christmas gift from Gordon. To make the pattern, I changed the image to black and white, ramped up the contrast, and then used the free program “Tiler” to tile print a 23″ x 52″ drop.
This will be a whole cloth quilt — the first one I’ve ever made. Although I’ve had the idea to do this quilt for some time, it was difficult finding the right fabric for the background. Over the weekend I finally found a piece that I think is really good — I had been thinking of a batik, but couldn’t find anything that worked. A couple of seams had to be added to get the correct size, and still maintain the horizontal look I wanted.
The little animals and plants will be stitched in both embroidery and applique, and I think I’ll probably quilt it with wavy horizontalines. It’s a lot of fun to work out which techniques and stitches I’m going to use for the each little motif. That’s one down, and 32 more to go.
Update: The quilt is finished — you can see it here
That looks a decidedly quirky and fun project – can’t wait to see how it goes! I’ll never look at water in quite the same way though!!!
I can’t wait to see this develop!!
What a fascinating project Martha! I really like what you’ve done so far. That shaded fabric looks perfect.
That looks like great fun! I can’t wait to see the progress!
This is going to look really neat! Keep us updated!! 🙂
This is fabulous Martha. It really has the WOW factor! Your artistic talent never fails to inspire. I’m really looking forward to seeing the completed project.
Now I am thinking that is a project that I might invest some time honing some embroidery skills for! Science-y embroidery!
This is going to be amazing! I can’t wait to see the finished work!
I can’t WAIT to see how this one turns out! It might be my all time favourite project of yours (and there is a long list of favourites to pick from!). It combines all of the best things: vintage, embroidery and quilting! Plus a little Charley Harper to boot?? Genius! Somebody is going to be VERY happy next Christmas.
Brilliant! I’ve wanted to make a Charley Harper quilt for a LONG time…this will be an amazing gift!
I can’t wait to see this quilt’s evolution! It’s going to be splendid!!
OMG!!! I took a college class in algae, and still have the little hand-colored notebook of the microscopic record from one spring in a pond! I kept thinking it would be good for a project, but the water drop format is perfect. Perhaps several drops rather than just the one……..