Flat 36

This quilt is inspired by a doorbell panel on a block of flats. I saw a photo somewhere and the image just stuck in my mind. The doorbells had obviously all been identical, but over time some buttons had become stained with nicotin, scribbled on with felt tips or replaced with buttons of other colours. The diversity in the nametags also told its own story about the change the place had seen over the years.

I made a quick sketch of one doorbell in my notebook at the time, and added the information that there were 4 x 9 doorbells and I promptly forgot about it. Ages later I came across my sketch and sat down to work out the proportions of the block in EQ before leaving it to stew for a while. Earlier this summer, I decided it was time to do something about it and I started pulling fabrics from my stash. Initially I thought about writing or embroidering names, but I decided to go more abstract and just use fabrics with random text on them instead (somehow my stash seems to have oodles of chatty fabric...) after all, this quilt is only a doorbell quilt because I say so, it could just as easily be an abstract arrangement of squares, rectangles and strips.

Anyhow... Once I started, the top went together quite quickly, but the quilting took a while. I decided on an allover pattern, and quilted a wavy line across the quilt and a big dart in  from the top and from the bottom before filling in the space with echoing lines. By the time I had filled in the empty spaces I had realized that the lines were too far apart, so there was nothing for it - I just had to double the amiunt if quilting by adding new quilting lines in between the ones already there. I think it was worth the effort though, and for a wall quilt, that amount of quilting works quite well.

I used a remnant of a great IKEA house fabric for the backing. Finished size of the quilt: 39x32"