Ellen Lindner: Art & Creativity

After arranging plants and such, our vignette looked like this:

Click any image for a MUCH better/larger view.

That’s Renee Decator seated near her painting, and me standing near my quilt.  The quilt at left was made by Lynn Greenberg, not shown. 

Here’s a better view of Renee’s painting, Taking a Bath with You:

I REALLY like it!  Doesn’t she use fantastic colors?  And great texture, too.

Lynn’s quilt is called Bromeliad.  Again, great colors and contrasts, inspired by the real thing.

And mine is called Blossoms Overhead.

It’s very unusual.  An experiment that almost ended up in the trash.  With the exception of the blossoms, the design is made entirely with stitching and paint.  I stitched the design first, and then painted it.  Ugh!  It looked terrible.  Like a cartoon!  So, I over painted the entire thing with white.  This helped in two ways.  It unified all the elements, and it added an interesting textural look.  Initially, the blossoms were created in exactly the same way.  But, eventually, I added interest by stitching little loose sheer petals over them. 

When I first finished this quilt I really disliked it.  I think mostly because of the frustration I had encountered when making it.  But now it’s growing on me, and I’m generally satisfied with it.  (I don’t think I’ll be using that technique again, though!)

Ellen Lindner
P.S.  You can see my inspiration photos and progress with this quilt in several December 2010 and January 2011 posts.  Of particular interest is the “before” image, in the January 22nd post, showing the “cartoon” version.

P.P.S.  Have you had any near disaster quilts?