My Chicago area “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” students brought their artistic courage to class, and made some really great work. (These photos were showing on my computer when photographed. The quality is sometimes low, but you’ll get the idea.)
Sue did a great job with her tree frog. She constructed him with fusible web on some release paper. (See the white outline?) Once she removes that he’ll be a little slimmer.
If I remember correctly Terre had never made an art quilt before. But, didn’t she do a great job? She fully embraced “jagged cutting” the mountain tops, which worked beautifully.
Deborah had never made any sort of quilt before! However, she bravely embraced fusible web, jagged cutting, and abstracted rhododendron flowers. (Don’t they look better than some perfect fussy cut version?)
Deborah’s inspiration photo.
This photo of Susan’s work doesn’t begin to do it justice. She’s working on a rock face, snow with shadows, a lake, and – the missing items – tall evergreen trees. It’s going to be a lovely composition.
Beth took a lot of artistic license with her cactus grouping, which worked really well. She had a pleated scrap that made great texture for one of the plants. See her finished piece in the “Design Your Own Nature” gallery. (Link at bottom of post.)
Cindy also worked on a desert scene. She used mostly solids to capture the austere beauty. She’ll use fusible web to secure the spiky plant. Won’t it be great?
Although Frances’ image was simple in composition, it wasn’t simple to construct. She did an excellent job capturing the subtleties of variation in the sky and snow.
My students always do an awesome job and these were no different. It sure makes it fun for me!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, a specialty fabric or two can be the primary inspiration for an entire quilt. And that’s what I wanted to try. This is sort of what I had in mind. I had intentionally dyed some large scale fabrics in order to try my hand at this. Plus, I…
Here are some more great quilts from “Let the Sun Shine In.” I love the strong contrasts Jayne Gaskins has used in her piece, Sunlight in the City. Karen Tauber’s quilt, Bargello with Coneflower featured a similar subject and colors. This was another favorite, Sunset, by Jenny Perry. Check out the stitching and texture. Lovely! This piece,…
For the first time I worked on two quilts at the same time, finishing them up very close together. Here’s the latest, Twigs. I’m very happy with it. And here’s a detail shot. The dark twigs were done in the dyeing stage. The white ones were added after piecing, with acrylic paint. As you can see,…
There was lots of energy, colorful fabric and fun when I met up with the quilters of the Southern Crescent for a “Floral Improv” class. First, students learned how to make free-form “daisies” and “poppies.” No rulers or patterns, please! After creating their flowers, students learned about composition as they arranged all their elements and…
Remember the ornament I showed you in the last post? The one I made for my sister? I made several others, each using my hand dyed scraps. This one is for my husband. He’s a big Florida Gators fan and their colors are orange and blue. Bonus content: We have a prankster friend who loves…
Possible duplicate post When putting away hand dyed fabrics, I noticed that my least favorites, the dark muted pieces, actually looked pretty good together. I decided to make a quilt with them, and to include a few accents of lighter colors. I was headed for a quilting retreat, so I packed up my potential fabrics…
