Medieval Quilting Update

Well i had a go at quilting some medieval designs to see how it would turn out.

here are the results:

This is about 2 1/2 hours work, including transfering the design to the fabric. By the way Childrens colouring books are perfect for this kind of work :-)

It is not finished yet, i still have a bit of detailing on the figure before i start the next two.

If doesn't look very exciting in the pictures but i think it prooves to me that i should be able to manage something on a larger scale.

(Excuse that thread that has blown over the top of the fabric.)

All this is, is a cotton cover over 3 layers of thin wool cloth. (i do realise this would need to change)

Now i know that this kind of quilting is achievable by myself, i need to look in to the types of materials that i can use.

1. I want to make it a "good" item

2. Something that will last for a while (ie materials need to be washable/strong/colourfast)

3. The design needs to be well though out. I think i will comission my partner to do the drawing of the quilt as he is by far the more "Technical" drawer out of the two of us Not sure what i want yet. Was thinking about a story that runs around the outside band of the quilt, with a larger "image" in the center of the quilt, or perhaps like the Tristan Quilt, several larger images 4 or 9 perhaps.

Questions:

Colour: it seems strange to me NOT to be using lots of colour for this. I need to think out what colours i do want to use. The tristan quilt is very monotone, reminiscent of some cream "French" quilts that i have seen.

construction: I need to find a way of doing this that best represents the Medieval way, but this may need to compromise with modern methods/skills/cost/use....

Size: A Queen size quilt covered all the way sounds awesome....achievable, hmm, perhaps not, but i don't particularily want to break it up with other fabric/nonembroidery areas or a geometric pattern in between the story ... Perhaps i may have to do a pillow or something instead.

Mathematically i have done about 30cm2, i would need 30000 cm 2 to cover ever inch of the quilt, say, perhaps i only cover about half (leaving room for gaps between stories and things so say 14000cm2 maybe because the designs are bigger and less room between stitch lines i would need 10000cm2. (minimum) that is still about 300 times the amount that i have already done, so it would take about 600 hours??? Not including all the drawing and marking that would go on it. That seems like quite a bit to me. But then again i guess it would...hmmm.....Bring out the professional embroiderers working 12 hours a day. If i had about 6 of them... working all week..... we might be in business :-)