Adventure Quilter

Flowers and foliage are always popular subjects in my class, “Design Your Own Nature Quilt,” and this time was no different.

Jodi had a FABULOUS photo, that she had taken, of some colorful leaves.

She wisely created an interesting dark background to set off the brighter leaves.  Then she bravely cut into some hand dyed fabrics for her leaves. Later, she’ll add some veins with stitching. Won’t it be great?

Gail also used one of her own photos. (Note the registration marks which she referenced when composing her quilt.)

As you might imagine the pink bush of flowers was rather challenging.  Especially trying to make it look like the photo! But, after trying a few things, Gail embraced the value of looseness and created a really effective pink bush. She’ll do a little shadowing on the fence and be ready to quilt it.

Martha started with this photo of a lone cone flower.

She wanted to really showcase this solitary blossom, so cropped it almost into a square.  Her use of different lavenders added interest to the petals.  She’ll add plenty of French knots to the top.  That will give it a lot of texture and finish it off nicely.

Pat had a great starting photo, but with a lot going on.  She knew she’d need to simplify things some.

The perfect background/water fabric went a long way toward depicting the water, so she was able to focus on the flowers. (By the way, did you notice how much better her dark water sets off the flowers than the lighter photo background did?) A nice bonus. This is really going to be great.

Carol composed this Jack-in-the-pulpit pretty quickly.

As you can see, she has several little tiny lines of fabric in it.  These can be problematic, but I have a trick for dealing with them. Rather than cutting little tiny fiddly pieces of fabric, I have the students cut them bigger than needed.  Then, they cut the adjacent piece to size and slip the larger-than-needed fabric underneath.  The edge of that adjacent piece properly defines the edge/shape of the tiny little piece. Can you see what I mean, above? Look at the top green curvy section that has 4 white lines showing.  Those 4 lines are actually one larger piece of white fabric. The green fabric on top has been cut to reveal just enough of the white.

Carol pronounced this trick “The best tip of the day.” It really came in handy on her wonderful little quilt. (By the way, Carol was so speedy that she made good progress on a second quilt! I didn’t get any good photos of it, however.)

This group of women was very talented and very fun to work with.  (And they fed me home-cooked desserts!) I hope I get to visit Brevard Art Quilters again one of these days.

Ellen Lindner
P.S. Find out more about bringing this class to your group.

I had SO MUCH FUN using my hand dyed fabrics in this recent quilt!  I’m calling it Palm Fronds, and I really like it. It’s 36″ x 24″.

About one third of the fabrics used are ones I dyed.  So exciting!

I like this quilt so much I think I might do another couple to make a series. And I’m busy planning my next round of dyeing.

Ellen Lindner

“Be inspired by your photo, not controlled by it.” This is our class motto in Design Your Own Nature Quilt. The quilts in this post are good examples of that.

Barbara had this great starting photo.  She noticed the vertical striations and decided to abstract them a little and to exaggerate them.

Isn’t that more interesting?  I think so.

Barbara was kind enough to later send me a photo of her finished quilt.  Here it is, “Uluru, Austraila.” I think it’s fantastic!

Joan started with this great photo. Although she planned to eliminate quite a few trees, she wanted to reproduce it pretty closely.

However, as she began to exactly match some of the red colors in the foreground, she decided they weren’t bright enough for her.  She kicked up the colors and was much happier with it.

Then, it was time to tackle the mass of yellow leaves in the background.  Fortunately, Joan had a wonderful tree-like fabric that could be cut and used over and over to get the desired effect.

This is what it looked like at the end of class.  Very dramatic, right?

For her second quilt, Barbara started with a great photo taken in Hawaii.

Again, she simplified the shapes of the fields, and played up only the best parts of her photo. See the in-progress photo below.

Here’s her finished quilt, “Taro Ponds, Hanalei, Kauai.”

And a detail shot of the flooded fields.

These ladies did great work!

Ellen Lindner

Two students brought photos of sunflowers as their inspirations.  This was Jo-Ann’s.

She needed to make a long skinny piece to fit a particular backing so she was NOT controlled by her photo.  She edited it very successfully.  Here it is before stems are added. Isn’t it vibrant and lively?

After her first wonderful piece, Gloria started designing a second piece.  These were her inspiration photos.

She started sketching, but could tell that it wasn’t quite right.

I suggested that it looked rather top heavy and asked, “What would happen if you rotated it?” She did, and got this.  Much better.

I’m sure both of these quilts will be happy and upbeat.

Ellen Lindner

There are two types of texture in art: real, and visual.  Visual texture is achieved with value and pattern changes and is one of the things I teach in class.

Two students brought in mushroom photos to use as their inspirations.  Their photos had a lot of visual texture and these two worked hard at creating it in their pieces.

Here’s Kate’s photo. What wonderful pattern and texture!  Can you see that she’ll REALLY need to rely on value to depict this shape?

Well, she did just that and this was her quilt, ready for stitching.  Nice!

Peggy’s photo included the same challenges.

Again, she used value  and raggedy (“jagged”) edges to complete the task.  Dark stitching has added some definition and she’ll add more.

As an aside, these two were seated at the same table and referred to themselves as “the fun guys.” Get it?  They cracked me up.

One of the students, Barbara, LOVES to use actual texture in her work.  The gnarled and twisted tree of her inspiration photo was perfect for some experimentation.

She started out composing her tree much like the other students.  However, she added contrasting fabrics on both the top of her tree and underneath it.

Later, she cut into the tree, revealing those contrasting fabrics below. She also stitched tucks into place, and did quite a bit of machine stitching.

The effect was very rugged looking: perfect for a tree trunk!

Isn’t that interesting?

It was VERY fun to see these pieces come together!

Ellen Lindner

Gee, this quilt has been fun to make!

After completing the foreground, it was time to address the background – again, with many hand dyed fabrics. First, I auditioned possible fabrics.  I really wanted to use the darkest one, but I was worried that it would created too much contrast.

Still, I kept it in initially. As you can see, I’m tearing fabrics and laying them in horizontally.

This is what it looked like when the background was complete.  I did eventually move the darkest piece.  Also, I made the blue with crosses pieces (on the left) smaller after taking this picture.  Like the dark fabric, it provided just a little too much contrast.

After composing and pinning the design, I glue it fairly thoroughly before taking it to the machine.  That’s in progress below.

Next comes quilting and I’ll get to use my new sewing machine!

Ellen Lindner

I’ve been really anxious to use my recently dyed fabrics. In a very uncharacteristic move I actually started on a quilt using them BEFORE completing the last thing.  Shocking!

I started with some sketches, and picked this one to use.  Because I’ve been doing a few quilts sized 36″ x 24″, I decided to alter the sketch accordingly.

My dyed fabrics would determine the color palette.  I pinned up those that seemed to go together, especially ones with green or organic colors.

I had quite a collection of compatible pieces, with a lovely yellow-green and fuchsia theme.

But wait.  Was this TOO pretty and predictable?  Did it need a shot of “ugly?”  Something unexpected?  What about something yellow-orange or orange?

YES! That little jolt of contrast is just what the palette needed! (But, maybe the blue with yellow crosses wouldn’t make the cut.)

After pinning a piece of muslin on the design wall, I drew in the major lines and began to audition what should go where.  It was great fun to use large pieces of MY OWN fabrics, and things went quickly.

The leaves, before veins, are shown below.

Next came vertical veins. These were easy to add since I had already left space for them.  As a result, the veins could be larger-than-needed strips of fabric that slipped underneath the earlier fabrics.

I use that “slip under technique” a lot.  It’s a good way to avoid working with tiny little strips of fabric.

Then, I trimmed the remaining leaf pieces a little in order to add the diagonal veins in a similar fashion.

Don’t you love that yellow-orange?

On to the background.

Ellen Lindner

My quilt, Splash, is finally complete. It had a long intermission while I purchased a working sewing machine.  But, now it’s finished and I’m very happy!

This piece is made largely from fabrics I hand painted.  That involved a bit of a learning curve, as did the stitching of the stiffer-than-usual fabrics which resulted.

I did quite a bit of experimenting on this quilt, including throwing paint on it at one point!

I’m happy with the results, but after having it on my design wall for SO long, I’m quite happy to move on to the next thing.

Find out dimensions and how to audition this quilt in your home.

Ellen Lindner