Alice's Round Table Quilt: Camelot

I struggled with this theme, trying to think beyond the "knights of the round table" and come up with a  a broader theme. But then it occurred to me:  Why not the knights?

And so I constructed a quilt featuring one of the knights of the round table, Sir Lancelot.  I have always loved the musical CAMELOT that told the story of the marriage of King Arthur to Queen Guenevere and then her illicit romance with the handsome Sir Lancelot.  And so my quilt features these three characters in the form of Wee Folk dolls.

I learned to make these dolls years ago while baby-sitting with my four year old grandson Locke in New York City, while his mother was a summer session visiting professor at the Columbia School of Law.  Prior to their arrival in the city, I met Linda Hicks and she took me to the wonderful quilting store, City Quilter.  It was there that I found Salley Mavor's book FELT WEE FOLK.  Thinking that Locke

might enjoy making these dolls, I bought the book and some supplies.

We did make a few, but I learned quickly that these dolls are too challenging for a pre-schooler, but Locke did enjoy watching me make them.  Later on that year I made him a set of Robin Hood dolls for a Christmas present, as he was at that time a huge fan of Robin Hood.  I've included a photo of this set below.  When I showed them to Judy Steward, she said, "Alice, you ought to feature some of these in a future MM quilt!"  Well, it's taken a lot of years for me to follow her suggestion!  Locke is now a junior in high school!

I used wool for the background for my quilt, blanket stitching the sections down to a base, along with the castle and the tree.  The dolls are constructed from chenille stems (like pipe cleanser), wooden beads for the heads, and their clothes are made from wool and rayon felt.  I decorated the clothing with different embroidery stitches and then sewed them onto the dolls with the blanket stitch.  Their arms and legs are wrapped with embroidery floss, and their hair is wool fleece.  I inked the features of their faces with permanent markers.

 

With so much embroidery, I decided to forego any real quilting.  The quilt is also finished along its edges with more blanket stitching.  The dolls are tacked onto the quilt in strategic places and I was relieved that this "tacking" kept them from sagging on the quilt.  I confess that this quilt took me far longer than any other quilt made for this blog!  But I loved every minute spent in its construction!

Grandson Locke's Robin Hood dolls--Robin,  Maid Marian, and Friar Tuck