#28 Celtic Knot

#28: Celtic Knot
Finished: 7/15/12
Techniques: Celtic Knot design, Bias Tape, Echo Quilting.
Size: 13 x13"

I was intrigued by the celtic knots I was reading about in the "Great Book of Celtic Patterns" by Lora Irish. The intricate weaving of lines in and out of other lines forming continuous loops holds great appeal for me, and I wondered if I could convert something like that into a quilt design.

I started out by finding a pattern that wasn't too easy, but wasn't too difficult either. It is a design I got from the book, but I modified it slightly when sketching it out to allow more space to work with. Once it was sketched, I stitched the design out onto the fabric as a guide. I could have made bias tape for the design, but just decided to use store bought bias tape that I had around. I have other colors but only had a sufficient amount of black and white for this particular design. I could have used a more colorful background, but doing so only seemed to detract from the celtic knot design, so I went with a mottled gray fabric. I ironed the bias tape in half so it was more like a cording. It really stands out! I used a simple zigzag stitch to attach it to the background.

Transferring the pattern to the fabric proved a little difficult. As a result, the design is not perfectly symmetrical. In the future, I think I will sketch out the entire design on paper, overlay it on the fabric and stitch through the paper for guidelines. Stitching the bias tape onto the fabric presented some problems as well. Pinning didn't work well because pulling out the pins as I was stitching caused the tape to shift. Working without pins meant that I had to keep lifting the tape to make sure I was centered on the guidelines. Using a glue stick was messy and didn't hold well. I could have tried cutting strips of Steam-A-Seam and attaching the bias tape before stitching, but that seemed like too much work. And no matter which method I used, I still had to deal with making sure that the bias tape went over or under the correct way, which is more difficult than you might think.

You might think with all this complaining that I didn't enjoy making this mini-quilt. But actually I did enjoy it. I had to use my problem-solving skills a lot, and it was a challenge, but I generally like the way it turned out.