This is a piece I started last fall, intended to be another in my smocked series. It was made from an old slip that I've had since my college days (now more than 20 years ago). I don't think I've ever worn it since college, which is a long time to keep something in your closet you don't wear.
Anyway, I first cut it into two pieces and painted it. I was originally going to use the two pieces as the front/back of the quilt, but the pieces were fairly small for a smocked quilt since the smocking eats up a lot of area so I decided it would be a diptych and both painted pieces would be "fronts." Evidently I didn't take pictures from the painting or quilting steps.
After quilting, I finished the edges with some purple fuzzy yarn from my stash and then set them aside to finish over the Christmas break at my mom's. I decided to leave them sort of skirt-shaped; I wasn't sure what that would do to the smocking, but I didn't want to square them up and lose even more fabric.
The first smocking pattern I tried was this lattice pattern, I'd been wanting to try it for a while, but unfortunately, it didn't work well with the small piece of quilted fabric. I think for small quilts, it really does help for the smocking pattern to have left-right symmetry so that the side pleats hang evenly on both sides.
I settled for this plainer pattern and I think it worked much better.
Here's the finished diptych, I like how the irregular shape made the two pieces nest nicely with one another when hanging. The purple and green color scheme reminded me of the wonderful iris at the Hondo Valley Iris Farm, so that's what it's named! The Hondo Valley is the very last thing you drive through going home to my parent's in New Mexico. If you're ever headed to Ruidoso in the spring/early summer, it's definitely worth a stop.
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| Hondo Valley Iris, c. Shannon Conley, 2024, 20" x 28" x 2" |
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