December 2013 quilt - Delhi Map for Shashank

Finally..... i have finished the piecing of the Delhi Map for Shashank. . I started with India Gate on October 5, 2013 and finished with the Yamuna on Dec 30 of the same year. The borders and binding are in black  and the backing is a beige cotton fabric. There are only two layers to this as Shashank wanted it to be light and easily portable. The final effect really is striking and even I am awed by my patience :)

Am now going to write down the entire process here for my future reference.

Shashank sent me a picture of the quilt he wanted - a satellite picture of Delhi which he filled up with colours. I picked up the fabric for this (all Uday mills cotton fabric which are supposed to be fast colours - thanks to Brinda for this) in Kolkata, and washed and pressed all the material, checking for fast colours (at least they didn't bleed in the first soaking). Meanwhile, in Delhi, Shashank took printouts of two halves of the map horizontally in actual size on paper - the map was to be of size 60'x72' -  and sent it to me. I again divided these two halves into halves again, and worked on one quarter at a time. 

  

I divided each quarter into logical segments and numbered each of them. The segments ranged from around 25 in the Yamuna section, to over 80 near Connaught Place. Based loosely on the colours on his original sheet, I coloured each of these segments. Thanks to Brinda's suggestion, I used fusible interfacing (a big thank you to Raju and Rupa for getting me this from Park Circus). Keeping the gummy/wrong  side up, I traced each segment on to the interfacing fabric, noting the number and colour along with the tracing. Each of these segments then were cut and ironed on to the appropriate coloured fabric, leaving about a 1/4 inch distance between different segments of the same colour. 

this picture of the back (above) shows the interfacing and the connections between segments.

The next step involved cutting each segment and then tacking up the edges to make sure the gummed fabric stayed. This was a boring, mind-numbing process, best done in front of the TV.  I traced, ironed and tacked approximately 10 or 15 segments at a time. The segments were joined to each other with a winding stitch, referring to the map for the placing, using the numbers for reference.

This was the first bit pieced by 5 Oct 2013 - India Gate

 Connaught Place was ready by 3 Dec, 2013 - this was the third quarter to be pieced.

Three of the four quarters were pieced together on 5 Dec, 2013

After the entire map was pieced together, I made the roads with chain stitch using black pearl cotton yarn, over every joint between segments. This was attractive, as well as a necessity as in some places the segments were joined loosely and the stitches tended to rip again. Definitely will do this by machine, or more carefully, next time (if there ever is a next time). 

The chain stitch between segments is clearly visible in the pictures above.

The railway lines are with knitting cotton yarn in black, stitched on with pearl cotton yarn, using the couching stitch. The tacking stitches also show clearly in this picture below, which shows the railway tracks.

Below is a close-up of the quilt, after the tacked-on stitches were removed - quite striking I must say.

 

Because the map was not going to be quilted, as Shashank was very specific about not wanting any stitching on the back, I was a bit worried about the interfacing becoming loose and floating around after the tacking was removed and so i removed most of it. I may have as well used paper as that may have been easier to remove.  Point to remember - thicker interfacing for neater edges.

The pieced quilt was bound with a 3" black sash vertically and 6" black sash horizontally, so that the final quilt measured 66x84 inches. A band of black fabric was added to both sides of the backing material to extend the width from 60" to 66 ".

The binding of both layers came out perfectly - the sash used was 2.8" in width, and all the mitred corners were great - thanks to so many binding videos that I watched.

As of today, I have declared the quilt completed. I may add on some more train tracks after Shashank sees the quilt, but as of now.... :)