Tag Archives | Dyed Fabrics

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

After finishing up the left 2/3 of my red and yellow “bean” quilt, it was time to tackle the right yellow portion. It came together pretty well. (Still in -progress below.)

During these final stages I also considered added some skinny lines, for energy. (See them pinned on at the top in the photo above?) I eventually decided against them, however, because I thought they’d attract too much attention. I wanted the other contrasts to be the attention getters. (And those bean shapes, of course.)

From early in the design phase I thought I’d probably want to applique on another couple yellow beans. (If you look back at the first post, you’ll see that I had one little piece of yellow fabric sitting on the red – near the top – as a place holder.) I auditioned that idea further near the end.

I also considered adding some red ones. That’s what the red blobs are for in the photo above. I decided I just needed one. I made it a partial bean, like the other red ones.

And then I cropped both sides. (But, I later added some of the red side back.)

Finally, I had it all put together and quilted.  As you can see above, I added some more bean outlines during the quilting process. I really like using a double black line for emphasis.

Then, it was time for photography.

You can see the full finished quilt here. I’d really appreciate your thoughts about it – especially what you think about these two colors together. Yay or nay?

Ellen Lindner