My Chicago area “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” students brought their artistic courage to class, and made some really great work. (These photos were showing on my computer when photographed. The quality is sometimes low, but you’ll get the idea.)
Sue did a great job with her tree frog. She constructed him with fusible web on some release paper. (See the white outline?) Once she removes that he’ll be a little slimmer.
If I remember correctly Terre had never made an art quilt before. But, didn’t she do a great job? She fully embraced “jagged cutting” the mountain tops, which worked beautifully.
Deborah had never made any sort of quilt before! However, she bravely embraced fusible web, jagged cutting, and abstracted rhododendron flowers. (Don’t they look better than some perfect fussy cut version?)
Deborah’s inspiration photo.
This photo of Susan’s work doesn’t begin to do it justice. She’s working on a rock face, snow with shadows, a lake, and – the missing items – tall evergreen trees. It’s going to be a lovely composition.
Beth took a lot of artistic license with her cactus grouping, which worked really well. She had a pleated scrap that made great texture for one of the plants. See her finished piece in the “Design Your Own Nature” gallery. (Link at bottom of post.)
Cindy also worked on a desert scene. She used mostly solids to capture the austere beauty. She’ll use fusible web to secure the spiky plant. Won’t it be great?
Although Frances’ image was simple in composition, it wasn’t simple to construct. She did an excellent job capturing the subtleties of variation in the sky and snow.
My students always do an awesome job and these were no different. It sure makes it fun for me!
Lately, I’ve been trying to dye fabrics to a larger scale. I feel like I succeeded with the one on the right. I screened red on through some construction fencing, and then added some blue-green squares. It should be very usable. I like the large red circles on the left one, but the design reads…
After many distractions, I finally got back to working on my Red Bud quilt. I decided to name it “Spring Forth,” because I was captivated by the way the Red Bud blossoms pop right up out of the trunks. I got lucky with the background fabrics. Many of them had colorful dots which worked…
Lately, I’ve been really concentrating on using a “variety of scale” in the patterns and compositions I’ve been using. First, in a collage course I took with Jane Davies. After making and cropping small collages she directed us to add details with markers. (I never asked for her feedback on these, so they’re MY interpretation …
Fresh on the heals of my recent “rough draft,” I used my lessons learned and jumped right into the next piece. I wanted to use some of my hand dyed fabrics with larger scaled prints. This is fairly new to me and I often find it challenging. A good reason to do it! I pulled…
The San Diego women in my “Love It and Leaf It” class had a great time and did wonderful work! I didn’t save my photos properly, but several of them were kind enough to send me photos after class. The expression on Diane’s face, above, is a good example of the delight each student…
