Dusk

Idea

Dusk is the fifth quilt of this year’s Fifteen by Fifteen challenge. I am following the chosen artist. In my case it was a Russian painter Arkhip Kuindzhi (1841- 1910), whose style was realism. I am not copying his works but only am following his style that had a focus on light effects. In all his paintings light plays a very important role. I already made four quilts in his style: Moonlight on the Atlantic Ocean, Antelope Canyon , The Sunset and Summertime or Lithuanian Landscape.

For 7 years I’ve been mesmerized by the photo of Richard Doughty, published in AramcoWorld magazine in 2015:

In this photo walls, windows, doors and satellite dishes tessellate at twilight into a patchwork pattern in the madinah, or walled old city, of Fez, Morocco, as a pedestrian passes into view along one of the city’s typically narrow stone streets.

I always wanted to make a quilt of the full size of this photo but it seemed impossible. This challenge gave me a chance to make a smaller version, where I used only a small part of the photo:

Quilt

It still looked very complicated keeping in mind that I had only one week to make this quilt. It has been a very busy September that I spent mostly traveling.

As always I started by making a pencil drawing of the photo on Picasa, printing out both- strait and reverse images:

I used the reverse image to cut pieces from Wonder Under to be cut out of the fabric and stuck in place. To be accurate I placed the straight image under the piece of muslin:

The most difficult part was to cut and arrange fabric pieces the way that one margin would always be covered by the piece next to it. I couldn’t rush using the hot iron either to make sure everything is in place before fusing. That’s how I built the quilt top:

As always free motion machine quilting is my favorite part of quilt making. I densely quilted it.

Finished quilt:

It took me three days of fusing and two days of quilting to finish this quilt. I am quite satisfied with the result but I don’t think I will ever make a quilt using the entire photo.

By the way I highly recommend for my readers to subscribe for AramcoWorld magazine. It is free and ships all over the world with no charge. It has nothing to do with the propaganda of Islam. There are many good articles about culture and history of the Middle East and its ties with the entire world. The print and photos are of very high quality. You can look at the magazine online and you can subscribe for it from there: AramcoWorld