Liberty Kantha Stitch Along - Part 1

Happy new year to you all!

I hope you had a relaxing Christmas. It's a lovely way to start the year in Australia, as we are on school holidays, and go at a slower pace for a few weeks.

That's the plan anyway! For me there's no better way to begin a year than to learn a new skill, and I'm trying Kantha quilting.

The project I'm sharing with you today is inspired by the Kantha (pronounced KAHN-taa) technique of applique and quilting.

It's a traditional Indian way of thriftily repurposing used saris and old cloth, and layering and quilting them together to create cushions and throws.

The texture is just amazing!

Kantha's have a range of uses in decorating, and the modern variations interpreted around the world are just as inpiring and exciting!

Who doesn't love a project, which can be pulled completely from your scrap bins if you wish??

That's a double yes for me!

There's just something so wonderful about sari silk - I got to wear a sari once, and have never forgotten how beautiful it was.

And even though I don't own one at the moment, I do have some stunning Liberty in my collection, courtesy of the wonderful girls at Ava&Neve.

Liberty is another fabric certainly worthy of turning into a Kantha artwork.

Its soft handle and sheen is certainly reminiscent of silk!

So I've only recently been introduced to this whole new idea by Cat from @tincatsew.

She had the brilliant idea of kicking off a stitch along using Liberty fabric to make a Kantha inspired project. I was instantly smitten when I saw what was involved!

So take my advice as being from one novice to another as I share what I'm doing, what works for me and what doesn't, and my design process using colour and style.

I have put together a really bright range of Liberty prints, with some good contrasting colour values.

I'll be using white Essex linen as my base fabric, and I'm also hoping to incorporate some wool felt flowers into my design as well. I'll be going shopping soon to add to my perle 8 thread collection, as most of the colours I seem to have are not bright ones.

For my base linen fabric and batting, I've cut it a good 2" bigger for both length and width than I actually want, as I'm sure the quilting puckers will distort it a reasonable amount, making the overall size shrink.

I'm planning on overlapping my fabrics on each other, which will create shadowing on the lighter fabrics that I don't want.

So I'm adding an extra layer of white cotton before pressing my seams under to prevent this.

Then the fun part begins!

There are really no rules here, but it helps to have an idea of where you're going.

Begin by layering your fabrics over your base. You don't even have to unfold anything for this part. Just move everything around until you like what you see.

I'm after a strong contrast effect, so I'm putting opposite colours on the colour wheel next to each other.

Think purple and yellow, blue next to orange, and green with red.

And then break a few rules if you want.

When you're happy with some of the layout (and you don't have to do it all to start with...I've only done a small fraction of mine) then begin cutting some pieces.

Leave enough seam allowance to press under.

I then put a few dabs of glue to hold a few of the pieces in place.

Now start stitching! I'm going for contrasting thread for a lot of mine, as I figured if I'm going to all that trouble to hand quilt it, I want it to be seen.

The stitches can be really big, and as you can see, my stitches are far from perfect.

I'm good with that. I'm going for that beautiful bubbly texture over perfection.

So this is where I'm up to at the moment and I'll be popping in regularly to share my progress.