Quilting with Alternative Fabric

I started my career as a quilt maker as a traditional quilter, but nowadays I make mostly art quilts. One of the really interesting things about information is that a lot of people tell us things that we end up believing are true that in the long run don't pan out to be so. There are not a whole lot of rules in quilting that we need to follow, and the times we do need to follow them are really pretty much just when we're following somebody else's pattern, if you're creating your own work there are absolutely no rules, you can use any technique you want to any product you want to, and any fabric you want to. So, if you're still stuck in the idea of thinking that the only type of fabric you can use to make your quilts with, and this goes for bed quilts too sometimes, is that regular cotton that you find in quilt stores, I'm gonna tell you something different. You can use any fabric you want, you just need to get an understanding of how that fabric is going to behave in the long run and whether or not it's going to do what you want it to do.

I love to use alternative fabrics, this particular little quilt here is wonderful hanging in a window, you can see through it, and it's made from Angelina fibers turned into a fabric, and then two layers of nylon tulle, so it's Angelina fabric and tulle, and it makes a quilt, it's got three layers cause three layers and stitch makes a quilt, so it actually is a quilt. Now this quilt looks a little bit more traditional, it's not really traditional in its style at all but it has an old fashioned look and so it lends that traditional feel to it, however there are no regular quilting fabrics in it, it begins with this canvas fabric that you see along the edge, that's also its backing. And then we have this white fabric here, which is really felt and it's acting as the batting but it shows from the front too. And then we have a jacquard cotton, some burlap, some wonderful embroidered silk, some linen, and some more of the canvas, and silk. Here we have a wonderful shot cotton, which some people are using in quilting these days, but not very often.

And this wonderful vintage hanky, so no traditional quilting fabrics but a somewhat traditional looking piece done in a very untraditional way but really gorgeous fabrics that have wonderful textures and slight variations in this beautiful white on white sort of coloration. In this piece, we do have some regular quilting cotton here in the middle, I simply did some painting on it and some embellishing but what's interesting about it is that it's sitting on two layers of boiled wool. And so that wool is not just for your penny rugs or your vintage looking wool appliques, but it can be used as negative space or as backing or as the batting. So this light pinker color is kind of the batting and then the dark red violet is the edge and the backing. Now this little guy is nothing but silk.

And if you've never worked with silk before it is just so yummy, tactile, it's gorgeous, it's got a nice sheen to it, and it just adds something to a piece. And this piece is a really simple, five fabrics, very simple textures, packing a wallop though, and it's got that wonderful sheen. And because it's Dupioni silk, it doesn't move and shift like some of the lighter weight silks do, it actually behaves just like cotton, so it's easy to work with too. This one has silk too, but it also has metal. And metal is basically a fabric.

They do metal fabricating, I don't think it's the same word. But here we have this metal that's fine enough that we can stitch through it, so it acts just like fabric. So I've actually stitched these metals down by machine, on silk that's laid on silk. Now these are some more very unusual fabrics and they are still fabrics. We have that metal repeated again and then this is a fabric that's called lutradur and it comes either white or black.

This one came white and then I dyed it or painted it with fabric paint, and then heated it to make it all Lacy and then used it as a fabric. And this metal fabric and the lutradur fabric are sitting on top of a really nice wool felt. The wool felt is mostly rayon with some wool in it, and so it's acting as fabric in the squares, it's acting as sashing in the background, and then it's acting as a boarder and the backing also. So no traditional quilting fabric. You can make some really wonderful, fun art pieces and usable quilts with quilting fabric but you can also do it with fabrics that have nothing to do with your quilt store.

Wonderful, fun, unique, different, weird fabrics that will give you really unique results. Try it sometime.