Charm School

"This quilt was inspired by a set of brass charms I had collected over the years. I managed to collect 26, with the subject matter of each charm starting with each letter of the alphabet. I did have to search for the xylophone and the queen bee to round out the set, but some late night shopping on Ebay solved that dilemma.

The typeface was purchased as a digital download on Etsy. I enlarged the letters and transferred them onto silk fabric. I cut squares out of a heavyweight Pellon interfacing and fused black Kona cotton to the squares. I then raw edge appliqued the letters to the fabric covered square, and blanket stitched around each letter with silk thread. I used various colored batiks to bind each square and machine couched a metallic cord along the edge of the binding. The same process was used for the diamond shaped squares that the charms are sewn to. I hand sewed gold beads in a random pattern around each letter, as well as a gold filigree finding with a turquoise bead sewn on each letter.

I constructed the rest of the quilt including the borders, and quilted the entire quilt using silk and polyester threads and Hobbs 80/20 batting on my Janome 7700 Horizon sewing machine. During the quilting process, I figured out that, because I was going to attach the letter blocks after the quilting, that I could quilt letters backwards where the blocks were going to be placed, and they would be right side up, and in order, on the back of the quilt, making it a 2-sided quilt. I also discovered a new quilting trick (new to me, anyway) when I followed the design of the black patterned fabric on the outer border with a polyester variegated thread. After the whole quilt was quilted, I used 2 sided brass rivets to attach the letter blocks to the quilt, so they would look nice on both sides. The charm blocks were glued on with Unique Stitch glue.

The quilt was finished off with a black and white stripe binding accented by a hand couched metallic turquoise trim. I also hand couched a gold metallic braid on the curved part of the border. I have a need to embellish most of my quilts, and on this one, I used hot-fix crystals, hot-fix rhinestuds, hot fix nail heads, and hot fix pearls. I also hand sewed on shell buttons, gold, pearl, and turquoise beads, and some gold filigree findings on the front as well as the back. The letters on the back were hand painted with a soft gold fabric paint to make them stand out.

Charm School is the 11th quilt in a series of alphabet quilts I am creating. My goal is to make 26, and each quilt takes about 6 months to finish. All of my quilts are original designs which usually start out with a pencil and graph paper."

-Janet Stone