We’ve been taking a closer look at the quilt Instruments of Praise, which was inspired by Psalm 150. So far, we’ve talked about the trumpet block – “praise Him with the sounding of the trumpet” – and the lyre block – “praise Him with the harp and lyre“. The psalm goes on to say: “praise Him with tambourine and dancing“.
I had this really neat semi-circular motif that I was planning to use in the four corners, but it had a lot of empty space.
Could a half tambourine fit? I thought so. Here is a close-up of the tambourine…
… and here it is with the rest of the corner motif.
The space between the tambourine and the corner motif was filled with a semi-circular trapunto motif.
The tambourine was easy, but “dancing” had me stumped. What does dancing even look like? I wasn’t sure how, or even if, I was going to incorporate a motif for dancing until I came across this line drawing of a ballet dancer.
Borrowing from my sewflakes technique, I fit the ballet dancer into a 45-degree wedge.
By rotating this image eight times, I had a ballet dancer sewflake…
… which was perfect for quilting in the middle of the quilt.
Want to make a version of this quilt? You can! The Instruments of Praise Pattern Pack will be available July 15th from C&T Publishing or my web store.
Available July 15, 2013
Kathy K. Wylie is a multiple international-award winning quilter specializing in appliqué, quilt design, domestic machine quilting and English Paper Piecing techniques. She has lectured and taught all over the country at guilds, shops and quilt shows and now offers online workshops and presentations. Her work has been featured in magazines, and her designs are available as individual patterns as well as in her book "Sewflakes: Papercut Appliqué Quilts."
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