The Hare and Hounds Quilt started out as a scavenger hunt, inspired by the ideas of
Heidi Parkes . We worked out our own list of things to represent, such as favourite food, animal, place, toy, book, birthstone, something we touch everyday and flower. We also added a season and a sun and moon, along with our hand prints and initials.
Our first job was to choose some base fabric - we decided on a plain light green cotton. By Friday dinnertime we had our first few motifs. At this point the sun was a circle and our birthstones were chunks of coloured material. We decided topaz could be blue, as I didn't want a chunk of yellow!
Hard at work! The sun is a much livelier brilliant red batik with carefully cut points (Which would be regretted when it came to sewing on!) The hare is on, and Deb has drawn out the hound. At this point, everything is just placed loosely on the base.
More of the motifs have been cut and we are playing with different layouts. Here we tried to make a trail of items around the sun and our initials were combined. We ditched the birthstone chunks and went for a more pictorial representation - Deb has added her amethyst. The silver moon had a bit of night sky and some stars and Deb's black fabric scissors are looking very convincing - we both tried to pick them up to use several times.
By Saturday evening, we had most of out motifs cut out and placed. In the end, we went for a random design, with gave a better balance of shapes and colours overall. The moon has changed from silver to blue, which shows up much better, and we have added the four suites of a deck of cards, and a little symbol for mum and dad. We have tacked down the shapes and started sewing them on using the machine. Deb bravely tackled the large sun.
On Sunday morning we added a blue mosaic border, a couple of leaves, some hexagons and ....
... some fabric chocolate buttons!
We were very pleased with the colourful result. I am going to finish the machine applique, and Deb is working on a label for the back. Then we just need to quilt it!
