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
As part of my spotlight on Creative Whimsy, I was asked to show several completed quilts.
Crotons served as an example of my earlier quilting style. This piece is one of my all time favorites!
Then, I showed some of my more recent abstract pieces, along with these words about my transition to this style.
My first attempts were definitely not great art, but I think they were necessary in order to develop my skills. I don’t regret the time they took or the fabric they required. The PROCESS was valuable!
This is my mindset in a nutshell. It makes me a little bit fearless because I know the process is valuable, not just the product.
Ripples and Runs is a more recent abstract piece, featuring my own hand dyed fabric.
Ripples and Runs
Ditto for Exuberance
A big thank you to Creative Whimsy for featuring me and my art! Their website has many more spotlights of very interesting artists. I hope you’ll investigate.
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
My current quilt is progressing along nicely, (but slowly.) I spent a LOT of time piecing the background and was quite happy with it. But, I wanted to tie the background of angular shapes into the design more. Since I planned to use large circular shapes in the foreground I thought skinny circles in the background would add interest and unity.
First, I auditioned fabrics for the background circles. I wanted them to be fairly subtle. Maybe about 5 or 6 of them. I thought these would be pretty close. But is that darkest blue too dark? We’ll see.
I drew the circles on my computer sketch and used that as a loose guide. I spent a good bit of time cutting the fused fabrics and arranging the circles. Here, 3 of my planned 6 are in place. But not attached yet! I pinned everything and studied it before fusing the circles in place.
What do you think about the dark blue circle, top left? I think it stands out a little, but I think it will work.
And this is where I am now. The background circles have been fused on and I’m working on the two foreground circles. (The colors are actually much brighter and I’m in love with them!)
OK, what about that skinny blue circle now? I think it’s okay, since the strong red foreground elements will attract more attention.
One thing that didn’t work: a wheat stencil. Actually, the stencil itself worked fine. But, it was just too large and too different from everything else. I’ll save it for something else.
I’ve been thinking about the title. This piece is about my parents. My working title was “Daddy Was a Farmer, Mama was a Southern Belle.” While that’s a great title, I don’t think it goes with the narrative of this story. I’ll simplify it and am still thinking about. Maybe I’ll use their names, the number of years they were married, or something along those lines. I can still reference farming and southern hospitality in the artist statement.
I’m getting close!
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 another report on my awesome Design Your Own Nature Quilt students, at Empty Spools.
Lucy was a delight. Like Katie, her only quilting experience was with simple piecing. The design concepts and construction techniques were completely new to her and she was very willing to learn them. Her inspiration photo was one she had taken herself. We talked about simplifying things by omitting a few trees and IMPLYING the distant foliage. Busy prints did the trick.
Since she added a dark border, Lucy added a narrow blue inner border on both the left and right. This kept the border and the left tree from merging together. The photo below shows the colors better. Can you tell that it’s quilted and faced? AND, it has the hanging sleeve already attached.
You can tell from her face that Lucy was very happy with her quilt!
Ellindale sent me a photo of a monarch butterfly, asking if it would work as a good inspiration photo. I said yes, but that I thought she should add one or more additional butterflies. She found a copyright free image of a butterfly with folded wings and added it to her sketch. She constructed the butterflies separately, so she’d be able to audition placement later. That really paid off, because she eventually turned the entire composition 90 degrees and came up with this.
She made a lot of progress in class, completing the quilting on the background (with added stems, butterfly antennae, and legs.)
Late on the 4th day, Ellindale started playing around with a poppy photo and very quickly came up with this. Isn’t it striking? The photo only had 2 flowers, but she wisely added a third. She also enlarged the flowers quite a bit, which filled the space very nicely. Another great example of being INSPIRED by the photo, rather than controlled by it.
Phyliss had a photo that really spoke of a particular place. Where do you find prickly pear cacti and blue doors? That’s right, the American southwest. But, again, Phyliss altered some things from the photo.
She left out some of the cactus paddles and suggested the door with just a colorful shape. Also, Phyliss brought some lacy textured fabrics from home that she used for “flowers” (insects) and other details.
She added some detailed quilting and soon had a completed quilt. Like some of the others, she got hers faced and added a hanging sleeve before the end of class.
I’m so proud of what these ladies accomplished!
Ellen Lindner
P.S. I’ll be teaching the same class next year at Empty Spools, March 16-21, 2025. I’d love to have you in class!
My week teaching Design Your Own Nature Quilt at Empty Spools Seminar was excellent and my students were fantastic! They brought their creative courage and tried lots of new things – with amazing results.
This was Alex’s board for the classroom walk-through. She did the little plant on the left first. She played down the contrast in the rocky foreground and increased the contrast with the leaves. Alex also enhanced the plant’s “body language” and removed some distracting details. As you can see, she had it all pinned and ready to quilt.
Next, Alex switched gears to the Joshua Tree photo. I thought it was more complex than she would enjoy, but I was wrong! She enjoyed hunting for the perfect fabrics and cutting all the little “pom-poms.” She has more to add when she gets home, but she quilted the foreground in class. (By the way, I had never seen a Joshua tree before and thought her photo was actually a drawing when I first saw it. My students were very good at educating me about them.)
Alex was also quick to help. She solved my Power Point issue and gave Lucy a great lesson on cleaning her machine. ALL the students had a great sense of camaraderie and cheered each other on. I loved it!
Terry was experienced at creating landscapes and it showed. Her first piece is the large one at the top of her board. She switched gears when she realized she had the perfect fabric at home. (Isn’t that always the way?) Check out her gray/black mountain in the top left of her composition. It’s a perfect example of letting the fabric do the work. Terry needed a black and white striation. She found it on the back of a printed fabric with palm fronds. Good eye!
I forget the name of Terry’s orange flower: some sort of lily. She did a great job of capturing the delicate petals. And just look how much the dark background has improved the composition! The additional contrast it provides really lets the flower SHINE! Terry plans to use a border and let the top part of her flower extend into it. I think that will be very effective. And she has some leaves to add, too.
Katie definitely brought her CAN DO attitude. Her experience was limited to simple piecing, so this was all new territory for her! She trusted the process, though, and forged ahead. There were times when she thought it was terrible, but she trusted my direction and eventually ended up with something she loved. Me too!
Here’s her inspiration photo. We talked about her favorite parts and how she could apply our class motto, “Be inspired by your photo, not controlled by it.” She decided to focus on busy flowers, the strong blue sky, and the arcing stems.
And this is what she got. I’d say she definitely hit the mark. AND this is completely quilted, faced, and has a hanging sleeve attached!!!
As I told my students, “they made me look good.” And we had so much fun, too!
There’s more to come. Keep and eye out.
Ellen Lindner
P.S. See more student work.
