Adventure Quilter
Ellen Lindner uses fabric the way a painter uses paint, with extraordinary results
Whew! After LOTS of rearranging and trial and error, I’ve finally finished this piece. And I’m quite happy with it.
The finished piece is 36″ x 26″. It’s available for $695.
The yellow in this detail shot looks a little yellow-green, but it will show you the circular quilting pattern, done both on the machine and by hand.
I think it’s well named, don’t you?
Ellen Lindner
P.S. See recent posts about how I dyed the fabric for this, and in-progress construction photos.
I had a really fantastic opportunity last week. A friend was unable to attend a 2-day Pat Pauly class and gifted it to me. How wonderful! Pat is one of my favorite teachers and I knew this class about using skinny lines and settings would be fun, educational, and challenging. And I was right on all counts.
We started by learning how to make skinny lines. They’re lots of fun and easy to do.
Next, Pat taught us how to set in blocs and a variety of other shapes.
Soon, I had a hodgepodge of wonky blocks growing on my design wall
Pat encouraged us to slice into our shapes, insert new lines, put things back together off-kilter, etc. Plus, we used the same five fabrics everywhere, so there was a good amount of “cross pollination.”
She gave us some pointers about composition and mine slowly started turning into something other than “fruit salad.”
In the shot above you can see about what mine looked like at the end of the class. By then I couldn’t put it down! I was having too much fun putting this fabric puzzle together!
I worked on it fairly consistently for another couple of days. I did a lot of folding fabrics to audition ideas, plotting, and planning.
Eventually, I had to design little pieces to fill in various gaps.
Then, it all came together! This is the quilt top ready for the next step. Although the colors are a little more jarring than I usually select, I really like them. (All the fabrics are my hand dyes, except for the black ones.)
See the finished quilt, A Little Bit Tart.
Ellen Lindner
It’s great to have my quilts, once again, traveling to real live art and quilt shows. Especially when I win an award! Such was the case with this quilt, Miscommunication. 
It won third place at the 2nd Biennial Fiber Arts National Juried Exhibition in Bedford, VA. How nice! This exhibit is on display through August 21st, if you happen to be in the area.
In addition, my quilt Melting Pot is part of the “Floridian Flavors” exhibit currently on display at the Leepa-Rattner museum in Tarpon Springs, FL.
This exhibit features work made by the Florida members of SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates,) and will be on display through August 15th.
Artwork by Gretchen Brooks, admired by viewers.
***A road trip is really worthwhile in this case, because just down the road, in Dunedin, FL, you’ll find THREE more wonderful art quilt exhibits at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center. One of them features work by the Tentmakers of Cairo and I can’t wait to see that!
I also got word that my quilt, Florida Native #2, has been accepted into the exhibit “Let the Sun Shine In.” This exhibit will be virtual, as well as on display in at least one gallery. (TBD.)
I hope you get to see some great quilts in person!
Ellen Lindner
As I worked on my two-colored “beet” quilt, it became obvious that composition was going to be SUPER important in creating a successful piece.
Because the yellow showed up so sharply against the reds and purples I knew the yellow circles would form the focal point of the piece and they’d need to be arranged just so. With that in mind, I arranged them first, even before all the background decisions had been made.
In the shot above, I’ve used a variety of commercial fabrics as place holders for the background (hand-dyed) fabrics I actually plan to use. It was just easier to compose against these dark colors than the white of my design wall.
Then I began to replace the initial background fabrics with my hand dyed ones. Still with just a bare bones composition.
In the shot below, I’ve settled upon the new background fabrics and they’re mostly sewn together.
Time to add some low-contrast beet-colored circles to the background. I knew they’d add interest, and they did.
But, I began to think the space just wasn’t filled enough. Did I need more circles? Or more YELLOW circles – for contrast? I played with this idea on my computer.
Hmm, that certainly filled the space more. Time to consider.
Either way, I’ll add some more low contract background circles.
Ellen Lindner
I’ve been having fun making units for my current quilt. It features the colors of red and yellow beets, represented by wonky circles. Follow along with my quilt design decisions.
This was an early start.
Initially, I made all the circles very imperfect.
But, as I began to play with composition I began to question this decision. The yellow parts showed up SO MUCH, and I wasn’t sure I liked the off-kilter look.
Like this:
So, I did some experimenting, leaving the interior of the circles wonky, but aligning the outer yellow rings more accurately. Like this.
I think it’s an improvement (even though the color of this photo is off.)
Next, comes composition. Some questions I’m tossing around:
– Is the composition tight enough? Do I need to bring things more to center?
– Should they overlap more? (My working title is “Beet Salad,” so I’m thinking yes.)
– Do I need more circles?
– Do the circles show up well enough? Will I need to add yellow rims to some of them?
I’m moving ahead with this and happy with my progress.
Ellen Lindner
One of the best things about my “Grow with the Flow” class is that the students get their projects completely finished during the 6 hour time frame. And that often includes facing it!
See the results of a recent small class in Arroyo Grande, CA.
Priscilla chose bright reds and pinks.
That’s Barb peeking about from behind her turquoise and yellow piece. (I think her piece was faced at this point.)
And Gayle showing off hers.
Tommie had to leave early so this photo was taken at hour #5. All she has left to do is to face it. Great colors!
And here’s Susan’s piece, all nicely faced. All it needs is a sleeve!
Aren’t these great? They each did wonderful work and accomplished a lot.
I’d love to teach this class, or a different one, for your guild.
Ellen Lindner
Earlier I showed you the fabrics I dyed in anticipation of making a beet colored quilt. Next, it was time to start the quilt design. I knew I wanted the berry-colored fabrics to be the stars, with the yellows as accents. My first thought was to piece little sharp bits of yellow, but I wasn’t sure that played well with the idea of curvy beets. So, I decided to play with wonky, improvisational circles.
Maybe something like this.
I liked it!
I’ve been traveling and I took my fabrics with me. I made a few more units while away and tried them all laid on my hotel bed.
Definite potential for a quilt design!
And then, I played some more on the flight home. It’s amazing how sharp those little kiddie scissors are.
My plan is to make a lot more units and then to start arranging them on my design wall. Stay tuned!
Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’m just gluing these circles together. Fast and easy!
I’ve shown you some of my fabric dyeing challenges, as well as over-dyed corrections. But, sometimes everything comes out exactly as I had hoped. This little scrap is one such example.
I made it with a two step process. First, I scraped dye through a stencil in a couple places. Then, I cleaned my squeegee and used the same dirty stencil for another couple of pulls with clear paste. The clear paste prints the little bit of dye caught in the crevices, resulting in a ghost image. I just love the delicate effect!
Here’s a detail shot.
Don’t you love the effect?
Ellen Lindner
When dyeing fabric, there are always a few fabrics that don’t quite match my intentions. When that happens, I consider over dyeing them. Which simply means dyeing the whole piece a second time.
The background color on this one was just too pale for my liking.
So, I over dyed it with a diluted red.
Truly. It really was diluted! But, apparently it was stronger than I realized. No worries. I like it better than before and I’ll definitely be able to use it. Maybe I’ll soften it with a subtle stamped design in white.
This green fabric was not bad except for the red lines I had drawn on. They made it really ugly.
I decided to embrace the red theme by over dyeing with orange.
Hmm, well it’s better, I think. Very usable, but not that exciting. I think I’ll draw on some dark blue or black circles.
Did I mention that dyeing fabric requires patience? Yep. Patience to wait to wash out fabrics and then patience when additional steps or corrections are needed. It sure is fun, though!
Ellen Lindner
Updated July 1, 2021:
I used white transparent fabric paint and stenciled a ginkgo leaf design onto the red fabric.
I also used the stencil as a guide for drawing additional leaves with a permanent marker. I really like the effect. I think I’ll be doing more of that.
After seeing a photo of a red beet along with a yellow one, I got the idea to make a quilt in those colors. I set out to dye fabrics in a variety of beet/berry colors, along with some dull yellow ones. Thankfully, I had already done quite a bit of color swatching, so I was able to refer to my results as a reference.
These are my final results, and I’m quite happy with them.
I was really thankful for the color swatches. That’s because wet dye always looks different from the washed and dried version. Especially with strong colors.
Take this piece, for example. I was aiming for a variety of beet/berry/grape colors, all in the same fabric. Although it was hard to see the variations in colors, I trusted my swatches and mixed the fabric dye colors accordingly. This is what it looked like. NOT reassuring!
But, this is what it looked like dry – almost exactly what I wanted.
It turns out that my dye mixture was a little thin, so the stencil motif blurred somewhat. But, actually, I like the imperfect effect quite a bit. Here’s a detail shot.
I’m looking forward to using these fabrics!
Ellen Lindner
P.S. The color swatching is an exercise in the book Colour Your Palette, by Leah Higgins.