Italian Colour Builder Challenge with Aurifil

/ quiltinggail

Our challenge was to “create a piece inspired by your assigned Italian destination.”

I was sent Pompeii Red Aurifil colour builder set. It contains 3 beautiful reds: 5002 (Medium Red), 2250 (Red) and 1103 (Burgundy).

Pompeii is a city with lots of red stone buildings and ruins with Mount Vesuvius in the background. Mount Vesuvius is an active volcano, with the latest eruption in 1944. However, in 79 AD, it’s eruption buried the city and it was abandoned for centuries. In the 1700s, a group of explorers started to dig and discovered that many of the artifacts and people were still intact. Today, Pompeii continues to be an active archaeological dig.(Information obtained from: https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/pompeii)

I really didn’t want to work on buildings. Mount Vesuvius looks beautiful, but doesn’t have any red features. What to do?

Then, as I was surfing the internet more, I came across some amazing pictures of the mountain erupting. This photo is the inspiration for my mini quilt.

I started with making the sky … the light blue and the dark blue (Both were scraps of 10″ squares from the Starry Night stack I had). I added the 2 brown fabrics for the mountain: one is Wavy Dots-Cappuccino and the other is Brownie. The orange fabric was from a stash builder bundle. These were all joined with wavy improv seams. In the 2nd picture, the 3 threads on the left are the Pompeii threads, the 3 on the right are from my thread stash. The grey was intended to be used for the smoke but I didn’t use it. This piece measured 19 1/2″ x 20″ … I thought with adding a border, It would easily be 20″ x 20.”

Once the base was made, I used Hobbs fusible batting and the backing is “Brownie.” I LOVED using the fusible batting, there was absolutely NO need for spray … and I knew that it would not shift while I was quilting.

I wanted to stretch myself and thought I’d do some thread painting. I started by using the 3 Pompeii Red threads. This was sewn on my Janome M7, using the straight free motion stitch and the free motion zig-zag stitch #1.

It definitely needed the lighter threads … so I went to my Aurifil stash (yes, I do have many, many colours!) I chose the following threads: 2134 (Spun Gold), 2140 (Orange Mustard), and 2220 (Light Salmon).

Wow … I used over 10 bobbins of thread and it shrunk … A LOT!!! I knew it would likely shrink a little, but I was shocked at how much it did! After I squared it up and added the border, this mini is 16″ x 18.” I knew it would likely shrink a little, but I was shocked at how much it did! And it shrunk the most in the middle and was an hourglass shape!

This is my finished piece and I called it “Mt. Vesuvius Eruption.” Not a very imaginative title, but at least I have named it!

Thank you!

Disclosure: The fabrics, batting, thread and needles were generously supplied by the following companies: Thank you, Island Batik  Aurifil Thread  Hobbs Batting & Schmetz Needles !!

One who sleeps under a quilt is covered by LOVE!

Happy Quilting!    
Gail 

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23 thoughts on “Italian Colour Builder Challenge with Aurifil”

  1. Gorgeous finish, Gail! You’ve really captured the fiery energy of the flowing lava. If you’re not loving your title, how about shortening it to just “Eruption” or just “Vesuvius?” If you wanted to go “serious artiste” with your nomenclature it can be the beginning of a series, like Eruption I. ;-).

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  2. What a great answer to the challenge! Yay you for stretching yourself with thread painting. The result is a perfect tribute to Pompeii. Thanks for sharing on Wednesday Wait Loss.

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  7. It’s fun to do something out of our comfort zone now and then, isn’t it? I can tell you had fun creating this. Did you use all 50wt thread, or with the added threads, did you use other weights?

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