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From the book "Twisted" Modern Quilts with a Vintage Twist" by Mary W. Kerr:
Author's Note:
"Dahlias in the Snow is the only quilt in this book that I did not create in collaboration with a longarm quilter. When I met JoAnn and Kim, I was intrigued by their unique style of quilting. These two talented quilters are definitely two parts of a whole. They have combined their individual talents and together are making appliqué quilts on their longarm quilting machines. I chose to send them an ill-made top from the 1940's, of bright green and pink flowers with rings.
Their process in working with it, and the finished quilt, are both fascinating!"Label
From the book "Twisted" Modern Quilts with a Vintage Twist" by Mary W. Kerr:
"When we received our quilt top, we were very excited to find we could take it apart into 14 appliqué blocks. Kim envisioned a new block from the old ones using our appliqué technique. Because of the size of the appliqué buds, she decided that she needed to do something big. After trying several options she decided on a Dahlia. And keeping with the modern theme, Kim designed some very modern quilting motifs. Once the decisions were made, the patterns were drawn and sent to JoAnn.
Next, Kim took the blocks to her local quilt shop in search of fabric to make the quilt. It seemed that it would be difficult to find something that matched the 1930's pink and green without it being a reproduction fabric But… there it was, Tula Pink, and the absolutely perfect fabric. It was uncanny how the color matched. The fabric had a wonderful clamshell pattern. Kim knew she wanted to put some sort of stripe on the quilt, and those little clam shells begged to be appliquéd. Since the original blocks were hand applied, she hand appliquéd the stripe on using needle turn appliqué. Once the quilt top background was complete it was ready to ship to JoAnn.
After JoAnn quilted the dahlia, she completed the background quilting, trimming around the dahlias. Once this background quilting was done, JoAnn began appliquéing the dahlia. It wasn't as straightforward as you might think. We wanted the flower buds to be put on the same way each time, and we wanted the angles and the new fabrics to match as well. We used some special templates to help with the process. The dahlia is so large that it had to be done in two passes. Kim created a stitch map telling Joanne exactly what piece needed to be sewn, in what order.
The final decision was to turn the quilt sideways so that the stripe was at the bottom. It was perfect. The results were well worth the effort. We can't wait to try some more of this type of appliqué!"