Learn more about The Duchess

This quilt was started in November 2008 and completed in February 2009. The total time to make this quilt was only around 300 hours, but more than half of that was spent hand sewing the thousands of beads, crystals, and yards of lace to the surface.

Creating a quilt like this really is a life changing experience. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, there were days that I cried and tore my hair and wanted to quit!

But by the time I got to the hand embellishing part of this quilt, I knew that I had created something very special and completely unique.

During this quilt I would periodically film certain sections. I can't promise that the lighting was always good or that my hair was even combed, but at least you can see how this quilt came together just from simple muslin and polyester batting into the Georgian masterpiece that it is.

Watch the Introduction with Leah Day

Watch the Duchess Being Made - 40 minutes

See The Duchess Very Close Up
(Click the "View Full Size" button at the top to see the full view)

Where can you see The Duchess?

The inspiration for this quilt came from the movie "The Duchess" with Kiera Knightly (my favorite actress) and directed by and the biography "The Duchess" written by Amanda Foreman.

"The Duchess" is actually Lady Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire. This was a woman truly ahead of her time. She was very active in Whig politics and instrumental in many elections.

Georgiana was a fashion icon of her time and personally invented the 3 foot stacked hairdo. She also became infamous for wearing ostrich feathers in her hair. These feathers were so rare and so expensive that the Queen eventually banned them from court.

But for all her fame, wealth, and beauty, Georgiana was rarely happy. Her marriage was difficult and often on the rocks. She was a compulsive gambler and failed to produce her husband an heir for many long years, during which she suffered humiliation and gossip as he began an affair with her best friend.

When I first saw the trailers for the movie "The Duchess" I was struck by the intensely beautiful and elaborate costuming. I soon found myself wanting to create something so elaborate, but instead of a dress, why not a quilt?

Having recently found Karen McTavish and her wonderful books on whitework quilting and McTavishing, I knew how to create a wholecloth quilt using plastic quilting templates, but what about designing the quilting on paper?

Using downloaded Georgian wall paper designs as inspiration, I first drew 1/4 of the quilt onto large graph paper. This was then transferred to the quilt using The Fine Line water soluble blue pens.

The quilt was then basted with only polyester batting (no backing) and quilted around each motif using YLI and Vanish Water Soluble Thread. The extra batting around each motif was then carefully clipped away.

The Duchess was then basted a second time using more polyester batting and cotton backing and quilted very densely using 100% cotton Guterman 50 wt thread.

After it was quilted, the quilt was soaked in water, blocked into shape, then bound using a bias binding. Now the quilt was pretty much finished. At 150 hours, it was a beautifully quilted wholecloth quilt.

But every time I looked at the quilt, I felt like it needed something more. My goal had been from the beginning to create an extremely elaborate quilt on par with the costuming of the movie.

So the beading began! I first started adding a row of seed beads and lace along the center medallion. Then I felt like I had to put the same beads and lace on the other side of the border. Then I had to add it to both the inner and outer rope borders.

Are you catching the pattern here?

Before I started the inner rope border, I ran out of clear seed beads and lace and was wanting to work on it, not go shopping. Instead I started adding clear swarovski crystals to the certain flowers and motifs in the center medallion.

Then I thought, "If I've added crystals to the motifs in the center, I have to add them to the border motifs too!"

So then I ran out of crystals and was out of seed beads and lace, and was having trouble finding these items in stores. I ended up buying crystals on ebay, but they took 3 weeks to ship from Hong Kong!

In the meantime, my son brought home a nasty cold from preschool so all I wanted to do was sit around and listen to audiobooks and stitch beads on this quilt. That's when I began stitching on an individual delica seed bead inside every single 1/2" square in the gridded space of the quilt.

I can only claim temporary insanity and heavy cold medication for this somehow sounding like a good idea at the time!

But even with how long they took to apply, I wouldn't have embellished this quilt any differently. The beads MADE this quilt in my opinion. They add a layer of elegance and beauty that pushes the quilt from beautiful to breathtaking.

Eventually all of the beads came in the mail or were found in local shops and each section was finished by working a little (or a lot) on it every day for 2 months.

All told, applying the beads took another 100-150 hours, making the grand total of time on the quilt to be somewhere around 300 hours from start to finish.

This quilt really was a journey for me. I started on this path in October with the idea and research, which spawned into a sort of obsession by November.

Along this journey I learned about patience dealing with sections of the quilt that seemed to take FOREVER! I learned about perseverance and sticking with it, even when I sometimes wanted to throw the whole thing in the trash and forget about it.

I learned about what it takes to create a quilt that I'm not only proud of, but sometimes look at and wonder if I really did make it. Was that me? Or was it all just a dream?

When I look at the Duchess, I see not only where I've been as a quilter, but where I'm going. She is not the only wholecloth quilt I will ever make, just the first. There is a whole world of designs styles and patterns left to create, and I'm just getting started!

I'll close with the words written on the tag sewn onto the back of The Duchess:

The Duchess

Designed, Quilted, and Created by Leah Christina Victoria Day
In Honor of Lady Georgiana Spencer
The Duchess of Devonshire

Completed February 21st, 2009

The first time that I saw her,
she had white doves in her eyes.
She spoke to me,
but I could not reply.
She was a stranger,
I had known for years.
She brought to me,
so many smiles and tears,
smiles and tears...

- Ben Harper, Two Hands of a Prayer

Where can you see the Duchess?

Denver National Quilt Festival IV - April 2009
Awarded Best Machine Workmanship Traditional

North Carolina Quilt Symposium - May 2009
Awarded 1st Place Large Wall Hanging Mixed / Other Techniques

National Quilting Association Show in Columbus Ohio - June 2009

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