58 Carats, Bound!

 

This is my quilt, 58 carats, so named because there are 58 unique fabrics in this quilt. Each diamond is different. There are a few prints that are represented with multiple colorways, and 80% of the fabrics came from my stash. One is over 30 years old. Many are a dozen years old. This quilt was not intended to be a colorwash style quilt, where the colors blend into each other. I wanted the edges here. I wanted to colors to look like layers or steps. What's really special about these fabrics is that they are "Giants." The vast majority of them are REALLY BIG PRINTS, what I call DIVAS. These are not necessarily designed to work with other big prints, they are designed to be the star of their own show.

In the movie Amadeus, Mozart talks about the final song in the third act of The Marriage of Figaro, where he has 11 people singing their own songs at the same time, "and it isn't noise." This quilt aims to do that kind of thing.

The binding is sewn, but now I have to sew the hanging sleeve on the back. I have discovered "The Repair Shop" on Netflix, so I have been watching that (along with the tennis in Oz) as I sew this up.

 

I'm truly sorry if you don't like opera, because The Marriage of Figaro is four hours of the most beautiful music ever written. Have you seen The Shawshank Redemption? Do you remember the scene where "the two Italian ladies sing?" That's from The Marriage of Figaro. Magic at its finest. If you are interested in opera, start with The Magic Flute, also by Mozart, and see if you can get a copy of the libretto (the "book") so you can follow along and understand what's happening. It's a comedy and quite wonderful. If you can't stand opera, don't bother leaving me a comment to say so.