Moth Eaten Quilt

  • Linen, naturally dyed with Madder, Tesu, Osage Orange, Black Tea, Acorns, Himalayan Rhubarb, Cutch, Sandlewood, Wattle and Pomegranate. The binding and back are also linen.

    Hand quilted with thick ivory sashiko thread. Cotton batting.

  • This half-cabin quilt is composed of 6x5 blocks. Each block is sashed in ivory with colorful pieces at each intersection.

    Stitched with thick ivory Sashiko style thread by hand.

  • This quilt was pieced with a machine and hand quilted. The linen was hand dyed by the artist.

    This was hand quilted with thick Sashiko style thread following the pattern in the center of each strip.

    The strips were cut by eye so they are irregular. The strips were sewn together and then cut at the edge of each section.

    The binding is machine stitched on the front and hand tacked on the back to hide the stitches with mitered corners.

    The back is naturally dyed linen constructed out of fabric remnants.

This curved snowball quilt is composed of 135 blocks in a 15x9 layout. Several blocks are stitched with wool crewel embroidery representing moths.

This quilt was designed was a doorway curtain in this cased opening inspired by the Hollyhocks and Owls wallpaper designed by Carson Ellis and printed by Thatcher Studio.

I decided to include the embroidered moths to reference the moth in the wallpaper. I named this the Moth Eaten quilt after someone noticed that it looked like the circles were holes that the moths were eating through the quilt. As soon as I read this it was so obvious. How can you include moths on a textile and not evoke their corrosive effect on textiles?

The quilt block is a curved variation of the traditional snowball block. Each block is composed of four quarter circles with a center piece.

  • Color matching

  • Design sketches

  • sample block idea

  • drawing the pattern

  • Cutting the block pieces

  • sample blocks

  • Cutting circles

  • Cutting pieces

  • chain stitching

  • Cutting

  • block layout

  • Me

  • creating a circle

  • Concept sketches

  • Concept art

  • Crewelwork

  • Shades of Gallant

  • First embroidery sample

  • Making a lot of blocks

  • The most amount of quarter circles

  • Pinning and Sewing circles

  • me

  • Pinning all at once

  • more moths in crewel

  • Favorite Moth: Silk Moth

  • Old and New playing well

  • quilt front complete

  • quilt front

  • Dogs on quilt. Juno always finds the quilt

  • quilt back

  • Preparing for basting

  • pin basting

  • basted

  • basted and ready for stitching

  • Designing the quilt stitches

  • First quilt stitches

  • stitches on the quilt back

  • quilt back stitches

  • child and dog

  • quiltback

  • curved snowball

  • color stories in my house

  • stitching

  • quilting the moths

  • quilt stitching complete

  • binding

  • binding

  • quilt curtain in use

  • black on black in the kitchen

  • quilt back with pocket to hang quilt curtain in the door

  • quilt curtain

  • with the Barn Owls and Hollyhock Wallpaper from Thatcher studio