Music Instruments patterns in my Shop

Music has played a major role in my life since I was a teenager.  Quite often it provides the escape, the focus and the peace of mind that can’t be found elsewhere.  I listen to and play both classical and modern music and I love them both.  After I made the classical Piano Trio music quilt, I just had to make a rock music quilt.  I made the instruments a while back but was waiting for the complementing quilting design to come to me.

I love Muse.  A week doesn’t go by where I don’t listen to a song by them.  I can’t believe that I didn’t think of this design sooner, even though the song Supermassive Black Hole has been blaring in my ears regularly.  Add that idea to my love of cosmology, and I couldn’t move away from the picture of a supermassive black hole with jets escaping from the middle quilted on my rock music piece.  I was giddy with excitement!

This is how I quilt quite often.  Instead of transferring the design onto the quilt, I use sheets of tracing paper and quilt on them directly.  I draw the design on the computer and print it out on tracing paper.  I trim the sheets of tracing paper to 8″ x 11″ so I can feed them into my printer.  Since the design is printed in segments on each sheet,  I use tape to join the sheets to each other.

If I decide to draw the design by hand, then I tape the sheets to each other before drawing the design.  Finally, I baste the quilt along with the design paper on top.  I then quilt over the design lines.  Once I finish quilting, I tear the paper off.  I haven’t tried this process on a large quilt yet, but it works really well on mini quilts.

Music Instruments patterns in my Shop

I used a very woody, low-volume setting for the Piano Trio.  I quilted a design based on an evenly-spaced, spiraling music stave.  This gives it a calm and harmonious feel, very much the way I see classical music.

Music Instruments patterns in my Shop

I used spirals for the rock music quilt too, but they are a lot more chaotic.  I also used bright yellow and red thread to quilt it whereas I used low-tone ecru and brown on the Piano Trio.  This little quilt has very different kind of dynamics.  It’s colourful and moody.

I could never choose between classical and rock music.  I love them both and they each touch my soul in different ways.  That’s how I suppose they are reflected in these two music quilts.

-Soma