Justine,Daphne,Deirdre,Dilys,Rebecca and Rachel.

Making connections with textiles and reading as my mind always seems to, I'm thinking it might be the same bit of my brain that engages both, and each time I ponder Daphne and a quilt that would match the books I return to the fabulous work of Dilys Fronks.
Dilys,( who kindly gave permission for me to use this picture,) has adapted the technique of reverse cut and sew applique to create a style of her own based on garden gates.To see one is to want one, to make one looks like a life's work, but wouldn't one of these done with the Rebecca Manderley gates be sheer absolute perfection?
In the past I've used cut and sew applique on smaller scale Baltimore quilt blocks as per Ellie Sienkiewicz (this one the legendary Divine Guidance for which a great deal of the same was needed) and I have got as far as making the background for a Dilys-style wall-hanging. The idea was to base it on The Eden Project, those roof hexagons begging to be replicated in the black lattice work and that's where I got well and truly stuck.
The background is made of a colourwash of small squares and is not as easy as it first seems. Deirdre Amsden recognised as the first quilter to use this technique and I've done simple colourwash before (this one my very first attempt in Liberty Tana Lawn,very simple!) and pre-requisite is a design wall. I have a huge flannelette sheet pinned up which serves as mine and with vast quantities of light-medium and dark fabric squares at the ready it all takes you back to the days of Fuzzy Felt. I start to play and squint and step back and reposition, use my own version (red cellophane sweet wrappers)  of something odd called a Ruby Beholder and seven hours later I find I am still stepping back, squinting and moving squares to create a balanced chiaroscuro of light and shade for my garden of colour.
Bookhound will helpfully appear when summoned.
Never summon a designer in the midst of this process....that looks wrong...but I liked that bit...the perspective doesn't work there...that took me ages...try this here and that there...I'll start again. Whenever I make anything like this I always ask him because, pain me though it may, he is actually always right and perhaps I should just hand that bit of the project over to his capable hands?
If you're going the whole Dilys the gates are then drawn onto a large piece of black fabric ( Bookhound's actually a draughtsman too, he could surely manage that bit while I oversee?) which is laid over the pieced top and meticulously cut away and appliqued onto the background inch by inch slowly revealing the garden beneath.
Perhaps I could be allowed to start a very little one when I get some of these other projects finished?
Currently I have a log-jam of quilting in completer-finisher mode and nothing in that really exciting thinking, planning, fabric-choosing, cutting, sewing stage...though I have thought ahead and gathered a few Daphne-esque fabrics as one must.
That Eating Room red cover on Justine's book just made me you see, but without further ado we must away to Fowey where Justine is waiting. I'm squeezing into her reading group on My Cousin Rachel this afternoon too so there will be lots to report later.

Comments

[Rhys]

What giddy times! You sound really excited and I am excited for you! Although we in Manchester have the Man U v Wigan football match as well this week end!!! But I have domestic chores...the cat to the Vet, there is a man coming to clean the cooker(!) and then because Marion has to escort her school leavers to their Prom this year she has decided she needs a Prom frock too and I have to go and help her choose it.....but I think my mind will be elsewhere!!!!!!!!

[Becca]

Those quilts are fantastic, and I love the one of the gates. I was priveliged to meet Justine at the Oxford Lit Fest, and since then my life seems to have become Bronte and du Maurier obsessed!

Hope you had a wonderful time in Cornwall - it sounds magical, and hopefully the weather will have added to the magic!

P.S. I found your blog through Justine's, so I hope you don't mind me randomly commenting! I've got a blog at livejournal, so feel free to nose (mistressdickens)