form meets function: quilt style

marty and i have been talking a lot about collaborating on artistic/craft projects lately. as is true of our relationship in general, we compliment each other well - our individual talents and qualities fill into each others' spaces nicely. we raise each other up as we stretch our own abilities in new ways together.
right now he's teaching me about aesthetics and form, something i don't have an intuitive sense about when it comes to creating things. and yesterday i taught him to sew on the bernette, and he has now taken on an identity as a "jeans repairman." (meaning he was able to fix the hole in his favorite pair of jeans and it was a great first sewing success). so he's helping me with concept and form; i'm helping him with function and execution.
this collaboration is coming to bear on the dragonfly quilt project, with the final inner square now completed. i made seven paper-pieced dragonflies, since seven is a significant number in baby payton's lakota culture, and we've been planning to fill in the eighth square in the constellation with his own initials, joining payton's presence in the circle on the eastern side. marty drew up the initials, stylizing his letters to mirror the dragonfly shape, and i worked with that pattern to applique the letters onto the quilt block. it's like graffiti style meets quilty craft.


you can see the pattern and its resulting quilt form here; we ended up dropping the "s" of "payton sky" and the heart from the design as it needed some decluttering. and the letters needed a little extra definition, so with marty's help i embroidered a shadow and some highlights into it as well. i'm pleased with how the block came out, and though it's a painstaking process to hand sew all those little angles and spaces between letters i take pride in putting those extra loving touches into my work.


and now the quilt top is complete and i'm ready to sandwich the quilt together with the batting (middle layer) and backing fabric (also dragonfly print) and start machine quilting it. i'm not sure yet what kind of stitching i'll be doing, something subtle i think since the whole quilt is so busy and i don't want to take away from the details already present in each of the dragonfly fabrics. updates on that coming soon.