Tag Archives | Fabric as inspiration

To Start: Some Fabulous Fabrics

I’m working on a new project, inspired by some great new fabrics. The bulk of these were painted by Pat Pauly. I purchased them to use together and they make my mouth water!

To Start: Fabulous Fabrics. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

In the photo above I’ve folded each one to reveal the parts I intend to work with. I think a good dose of black will also be needed.

And maybe some other fabrics.  Yellow-green, orange-red, blue-green?

To Start: Fabulous Fabrics. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Uh, no.

The hand drawn lines in the pink and white fabric got me thinking about lines so I spent some time doodling.  One of my sketches resulted in a very irregular diagonal line.  I thought that would be a good starting point for what would basically be a two-color quilt.  I cut out my favorite parts and began to place things on the design wall.

To Start: Fabulous Fabrics. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Because the pink fabric is painted in broad chunky shapes, I thought I could use a chunky composition elsewhere. Eventually, I got this:

To Start: Fabulous Fabrics. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

My scraps  yielded a few of the painted circles, so I added them back in judiciously.

To Start: Fabulous Fabrics. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I was pretty happy with this.  Still, I knew I needed to add some black.  Just how should I do that without competing with the wonderful black lines already there?  A quandary. (Hopefully, I’ll have a solution for the next post.)

Ellen Lindner

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Taking Inspiration from the Starting Fabric

As I worked on the abstract quilt, I continued to take clues and inspiration from the original fabric.  Since it was very angular, I wanted my pattern to be the same. Can you see how the shapes and lines of the side fabrics are extensions of the central fabric lines?

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Same for the quilting.  First, I stitched parallel lines on the two sides and in the middle I stitched around each little line.

Taking Inspiration from the Starting Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Then, I decided to stitch parallel lines in this central area.  Oh my!  WHAT was I thinking?  It was WAY too much starting and stopping for me and I gave up after the few lines shown above.

Plan B: concentric lines.  It worked pretty well, except for the fact that my variegated thread gave too much contrast in some of my messy spots.  I have a bit of redoing ahead of me.

Taking Inspiration from the Starting Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Next, it was time to think about the main design elements to be placed in the foreground of this piece.  Again, I wanted something angular, but when I checked, my sketchbooks I didn’t have anything like that.

Taking Inspiration from the Starting Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

So, I turned, once again, to the fabric itself.  I took close up shots of several of the fabric shapes and found one I liked. (Although I edited it quite a bit.)

Taking Inspiration from the Starting Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

And, so here is the plan for the final motif.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I’m liking it a lot.  Next will be determining what color to make the motif.  Light or dark versions of the colors already present would be an obvious choice.  But, I think I want to do something a little unexpected.  We’ll see.  Red maybe???

It’s been really fun to let the fabric inspire so many choices.

Have you ever done something inspired by a particular piece of fabric?

Ellen Lindner

 

 

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It all Started with Beautiful Fabric

Back in July I bought this beautiful painted piece of fabric from Pat Pauly.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Isn’t it gorgeous?  I knew it could be the start of something wonderful.  The only problem is that the scale of this fabric is much larger than I normally use. Which meant that I didn’t have other similarly scaled fabrics to work with.  Still, I thought I could feature this inspiration fabric and add simpler fabrics to it.

First, I had to figure out how much of this fabric to use and a rough idea of the size of the quilt.  I decided to use half of the fabric.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Then, I auditioned how I might cut it and reassemble it.  Folding helped me visualize the new shape of the fabric.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

So, I did this. The piece on the right has been turned 180 degrees.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Next, I began to audition other fabrics.  I thought these looked pretty good.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

At every turn, I used the starting fabric to help me make decisions.  Such as the angles for the side pieces.  I wanted them to enhance the angular nature of the starting fabric’s pattern. See what I mean?

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

Here’s the left side completed. (That is, pinned.)

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

And here’s the entire background when I THOUGHT it was finished.

It all Started with a Beautiful Fabric. Ellen Lindner, AdventureQuilter.com/blog

I decided that one of the yellow fabrics on the right showed up too much, so I had to address that.  Trial and error!

Thus far, I’ve shown you only the background.  But I was also working on an idea for a foreground motif.  I’ll show you that next time.

What would you do?

Ellen Lindner

 

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