Adventure Quilter
Ellen Lindner uses fabric the way a painter uses paint, with extraordinary results
My latest piece, Heat Wave, is now complete.
Heat Wave
I’m quite happy with it! The design was dictated, in part, by the triangular orange scraps I had on hand. I like the sharp points.
At 35 x 35, this piece is available for $1200. See more photos.
I used ALL of my orange and navy hand dyed fabrics in this piece. I’m looking forward to an upcoming dye session when I can make more.
Ellen Lindner
Creative Whimsy, a website about artists and their endeavors has just done a spotlight on me. How nice!
They sent me a ton of questions and I answered most of them. (I mean, you didn’t want to read PAGES about me, right?)
I was glad they asked about my process. I explained how I make decisions at the design wall, since it’s the part of quilt making I really like the most. I showed this series of pictures as an example.
They also asked for a photo of my studio. So, I bravely walked in, LEFT EVERYTHING IN PLACE, and took a photo. This gives you an idea of what it looks like mid-project, although it’s usually much worse!
I hope you’ll check out the full article (and be willing to scroll past all the ads.)
Ellen Lindner
As usual, my current quilt started with a high contrast piece of hand dyed fabric. This is all I had of it.
What could I do to best show it off?
The additional fabrics added above provided interest, but the original fabric swatch still seemed rather straight forward.
It was kinda hard to judge against white. I knew I wanted a blue background, so I added some to the design wall to help me judge the overall look.
I split the featured print and splayed it apart. I thought this added energy, plus some interesting negative blue space.
I began to audition additional colors and fabrics. What about a mass of orange on the right and across the bottom? I placed folded fabrics to consider options.
My orange fabric was limited and I knew I’d have to work with the shapes I had: sharp triangles.
That didn’t seem objectionable. However, I did get rid of the vertical yellow point near the center.
As you might imagine, there was some fiddly stitching on this one. It was actually easier than I expected and I’ll show you some about how I did it in the next post.
My next question: what to do with the lower left.
Ellen Lindner
I’ve been working on a new quilt, using fabrics I dye-printed during my last dying session. As you can see, I made them to go together.
To get started, I pulled these out, along with every fabric I thought MIGHT go with them. As usual, this stage was a rather ugly mess. (I was toying with the idea of using some pure red bits along with the pink.)
That seemed like overkill. I removed some busy high-contrast fabrics, most of the red, and tried out a little blue-green.
Much better. I was ready to move ahead.
There was a fabric combo in this collection that was really exciting me: the pink and black polka dots and the yellow-green print top left, with the little twiggy shapes. I liked the way the sharp little twigs contrasted with the round dots. Unfortunately, the photo above shows ALL the twiggy fabric that I had. I knew I would have to use it very purposefully and that it’s limited size would also dictate the overall size of the quilt.
Here’s the entire piece of twiggy fabric plus what I thought was an appropriate amount of the polka-dot. I quickly committed to the central composition and stitched two primary seams. Everything else is shown in audition stage and is only folded and pinned.
I really liked the vertical strip of black and yellow-green stripe just right of center (above.) I made it by carefully cutting a strip from the fabric with the large yellow-green rectangles. I was very happy with that result
Below, I added more fabric on the right. The black spacer between the stripe and the dots was needed as a calming note.
I wasn’t sure about the large rectangles on the left, shown above. They seemed to be sorta taking over. I removed them and concentrated on the right side for a bit. This corner combination seemed about right.
The left side was definitely going to need some attention. At this point it needed some weight (black) and some pink.
In the next post I’ll show you my progress.
Ellen Lindner
I’ve been wanting to do a series of quilts about my family. I made the first one, Happy Family, which used circles to represent people.
Happy Family
With that one the circles were an 11th hour addition. For the next one I wanted to be much more intentional.
After selecting green for the background of my current quilt it immediately got me thinking about my dad, a farmer. I decided to make a quilt about both my mom and my dad. My mom is a very gracious southern woman, who excels at entertaining, gardening, and cooking. I think of her as a Southern Belle, because she’s a beauty, as well. Thus, my working title became “Daddy was a Farmer, Mama was a Southern Belle.” (Note: my mom is still alive and she’s given her blessing to this title.)
So, how to depict these two with circles??? I knew I wanted to use red to contrast with the green. And it had a sort of farm feel to me, since farm equipment is often red.
I drew a sketch on the computer and began to audition my ideas on the design wall. I thought Dad (or Daddy as I often addressed him,) needed a big red sort of tear shaped oval.
But, Mom needed to be more curvy.
And slightly pinker.
I managed to find enough red fabrics for my purposes and I’m loving these colors together!
I was REALLY tempted to complete these two shapes, but I began to think about how much easier it would be to quilt the background before adding the circles, especially since I intended to add quilt a few more blue and green ones. So, I quilted the background and started auditioning fabrics for background circles.
The background circles will be MUCH skinnier than the foreground ones. Maybe pinky width. And they’ll have much lower contrast, serving as a background of ancestors.
The pace on this piece has finally quickened and I’m really enjoying it!
Ellen Lindner
For my latest quilt I envisioned an interesting green background with vibrantly colored circles in the foreground. I got to work on the background with my usual technique of auditioning fabrics and designing as I went along. I chose green, because I had A LOT of green fabric. Plus, I had a theme idea that would work well with green.
It was SLOW!
I would piece a section, audition a section, and repeat.
Thankfully, my efforts paid off and I was quite happy with the way it was developing.
To add interest in the less patterned areas I added several little skinny arcs.
I used red here and there to go with the fabrics and to support the red fabrics I planned to use in the foreground.
Here it is finished and I’m very happy with it. I think it has enough pattern to be interesting, but not so much that it will compete with the foreground.
I think there’s one commercial fabric in there, but otherwise I dyed all of them. I love using my own dyed fabric!
During the time it took to piece the background I had plenty of time to think about the foreground. I knew I wanted to use red in some very curvy/circular shapes. Auditioning red fabrics was next on my list.
Ellen LIndner
Here’s my latest quilt, Happy Family
I’m REALLY happy with it and I hope you like it, too.
As you can see, I added three loose circles, to add interest. Since there are three members of my immediate family, and because the colors are so upbeat, I decided to name it Happy Family.
I got carried away when taking detail shots. Again, because I just love what happens when these busy prints interact with one another.
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As usual, I printed 99% of these fabrics myself (with dye.)
This quilt is 32″h x 35″ w.
It’s available for purchase, at a price of $1100. If you’re interested in buying it contact me via email with the link at the bottom of the page.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. I really like the loose circles. I think I’ll use them in a future quilt.
P.P.S. I can’t wait to get started on the next quilt!
I’ve been dyeing again. These are the fabrics I created in a week-long session.
I tried to repeat motifs and colors so that I might be able to use some of these fabrics together. Like these.
Or, a different combination.
I don’t use much white, but thought it would be useful for creating contrast and interest. So, I did these.
These are all mono prints, done on slick vinyl. The vinyl makes the dye bead up, giving lacy results.
I think the blue and green one, above, could become a whole cloth quilt. Maybe with the addition of some black stitching?
Dyeing fabrics is always fun!
Ellen Lindner
In my last post, I showed how I started with a diagonal composition. That was probably a good starting point, but I could very quickly see that it was way to bulky and “regular.”
I knew it needed to have some variation and some energy added. So, I started trying new things. First, I got rid of the pink corner and I added a high contrast print with circles. That helped a lot!
I pieced together the center section, which had vertical pieces. I was pretty confident with that portion, so I left it in place while I auditioned changes in other areas.
I
You get the idea. But then, I decided I should turn that center section 90 degrees – just to mix things up.
It didn’t immediately look better. As a matter of fact, maybe it looked worse. But, since it was DIFFERENT FROM MY EARLIER VISION, it appealed to me and I decided to work with it some more. (After all, I could always turn it back.)
I kept this new center orientation as I continued to work on the placement of the red.
I’m loving the energy of this piece and I’m having fun working on it.
It needs a title, so I’m writing my thoughts on a list as ideas come to me.
Ellen Lindner
I dyed this fabric last year and it’s one of my favorites.
I was really happy with the way I had a viable design without doing anything more to it, but HOW do you design with that? I had a false start last year and am now trying again.
These are the collection of “featured” fabrics I thought I might be able to use. I call them featured fabrics because they have high amounts of contrast in them, which will draw the viewer’s eye. When working with such fabrics, I try to put them in place early on and then fill in with less dramatic fabrics, as needed.
Next, I pulled out every fabric I thought might work. As you can see, I like these colors and found that I had quite a collection.
But, maybe it needed something unexpected. What about accents of yellow?
Hmm. Maybe.
I liked the large twig (center right) on the dull orange print. But, I didn’t like the background fabric. So, I stenciled on a couple more using paint.
These should be usable.
I had my fabric decisions (mostly) made, so it was time to start moving things around on the design wall. (The challenging, but fun, part!)
Ellen Lindner
