This online class is very popular and it's no wonder. Students start with a beautiful piece of hand dyed fabric and end up with their own unique quilt. The results are always fabulous! One example is shown here. Check out the student gallery to see many more.

Full class details here. (This is a small class, so it tends to fill quickly.)

Above: Psychedelic Circuit Board, ©2010 Betty Ann Seeman

My latest quilt, Mountain Meadow, was inspired by a lovely spot on the Blue Ridge Drive, near Blowing Rock, North Carolina. You might expect that I enjoyed the view across distant mountain vistas, and I did. However, I was even more intrigued by the high meadow in the other direction, especially since the low sun was doing amazing things to the colors!

I took an abundance of photos and fiddled with them in the computer, to create my "sketch," shown at left.

I had great fun choosing busy fabrics for the sky, funky mountains, (striped!) and foreground. I kept it all pretty loose, selecting fabrics based on scale, to help create a sense of depth.

Then, it was time to start on the fence posts. Hmm. Should they be funky and loose also? Or was it important to preserve the 3D aspect created by the shadows? I decided to make them 3D, but not overly realistic.

This is what I came up with, at right. I was pretty happy with it. Since then, I've added more fence posts, LOTS of machine quilting, and post shadows. I've also started hand stitching the barbed wire. You can see lots of great detail shots of the whole process on my blog.

A while back, I was approached about teaching a class on my Body Language series. However, this technique is not conducive to a class, so I promised to write about it, instead.

This month, I'm revealing the first half of the article, which features the five quilts in the series and tells a little about each. Next month, I'll post the second half, which will explain my design and construction process. Part One Here.

- A new addition to the Sticky Fingers Gallery
- Article about Body Language quilts, part one