Things to do with Gelli Plate Prints - 3 Make Quilts

Having spent the other weekend at the SECC showing people how to use Gelli Plates and making lots more prints in the process, I thought it was time for another in the series of what to do with the prints once you have them.  This time I'm suggesting you make a quilt.

Bamboo Beauty by Gillian Cooper

This was one of my new quilts which was on show for the first time at the SECC as part of the Turning Point display and the background was made entirely from Gelli Plate Prints on fabric.

 I showed you how to Gelli Plate print in this blog post here, using the bamboo as an example.

 I deliberately printed onto dyed fabric as I seem to have something against white at the moment!  I had a big pile of prints on a variety of different fabrics.  

To make things easier for the piecing, I decided to piece them into columns.  Each column was a different width, but it stayed the same width all the way down.  I put the prints on my design wall to decide upon the layout, then pieced them all together.  I had intended to use a variety of fabrics, but in the end, I liked the simplicity of the prints on cotton.

Rather than add the different fabric prints, I added several pieces of sheer with bamboo leaf shapes cut out from it.

This is becoming like a game of spot the difference between the photos!  As the quilt was going in a group show, it had to be a specific size, so I trimmed it to fit.  I felt it needed something else on top.  I had always envisioned black bamboo on the top, but then I discovered my roll of purple and blue silk sari strips and fancied trying those.  I didn't think the colour contrast would be sufficient, but I really liked the strips, so wanted to give it a go.

I was right  - it didn't work!  Also, the shape of the leaves were not quite right, so I redrew it and cut it out of black fabric.  I will eventually Gelli Plate 
print a background for the purple/blue leaf.

I liked it a lot better and spent quite a time considering whether anything else was needed.  I decided to leave it (either less is more or I was worried about spoiling a quilt when I didn't have time to make another!).  All that needed to be added was the black binding.  Originally I was going to bind the edges using the same fabric as the prints, but it needed the black to pull in the leaf.

I now have several prints left over to play with further and lots of bamboo shoots cut out from sheers!