In the fall of 2017, hurricane Irma set its sights on Florida. Although Floridians don’t get too excited about most hurricanes, this one was a category 5, the strongest possible. It’s path was hard to predict, so ALL of the Florida peninsula was in the strike zone. As a result, widespread evacuations were ordered and…
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…
I’m having a little glitch with my blog posts. As I try to sort that out I’ll be posting some tests. To compensate you for putting up with them I’ll include some eye candy with each one. Here’s an early art quilt from 2001, called Hopes and Daydreams. Although it looks like I did complicated curved…
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…
“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…
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,…
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…
I had a fabulous time teaching “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” in western North Carolina recently. The students were talented, excited to learn, and willing to experiment. As a result, they produced some amazing quilts in our two days together. After learning some design concepts in the morning, the fabric was flying in the afternoon…
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…
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…