I had SO MUCH FUN using my hand dyed fabrics in this recent quilt! I’m calling it Palm Fronds, and I really like it. It’s 36″ x 24″.
About one third of the fabrics used are ones I dyed. So exciting!
I like this quilt so much I think I might do another couple to make a series. And I’m busy planning my next round of dyeing.
Ellen Lindner
“Be inspired by your photo, not controlled by it.” This is our class motto in Design Your Own Nature Quilt. The quilts in this post are good examples of that.
Barbara had this great starting photo. She noticed the vertical striations and decided to abstract them a little and to exaggerate them.
Isn’t that more interesting? I think so.
Barbara was kind enough to later send me a photo of her finished quilt. Here it is, “Uluru, Austraila.” I think it’s fantastic!
Joan started with this great photo. Although she planned to eliminate quite a few trees, she wanted to reproduce it pretty closely.
However, as she began to exactly match some of the red colors in the foreground, she decided they weren’t bright enough for her. She kicked up the colors and was much happier with it.
Then, it was time to tackle the mass of yellow leaves in the background. Fortunately, Joan had a wonderful tree-like fabric that could be cut and used over and over to get the desired effect.
This is what it looked like at the end of class. Very dramatic, right?
For her second quilt, Barbara started with a great photo taken in Hawaii.
Again, she simplified the shapes of the fields, and played up only the best parts of her photo. See the in-progress photo below.
Here’s her finished quilt, “Taro Ponds, Hanalei, Kauai.”
And a detail shot of the flooded fields.
These ladies did great work!
Ellen Lindner
Two students brought photos of sunflowers as their inspirations. This was Jo-Ann’s.
She needed to make a long skinny piece to fit a particular backing so she was NOT controlled by her photo. She edited it very successfully. Here it is before stems are added. Isn’t it vibrant and lively?
After her first wonderful piece, Gloria started designing a second piece. These were her inspiration photos.
She started sketching, but could tell that it wasn’t quite right.
I suggested that it looked rather top heavy and asked, “What would happen if you rotated it?” She did, and got this. Much better.
I’m sure both of these quilts will be happy and upbeat.
Ellen Lindner
There are two types of texture in art: real, and visual. Visual texture is achieved with value and pattern changes and is one of the things I teach in class.
Two students brought in mushroom photos to use as their inspirations. Their photos had a lot of visual texture and these two worked hard at creating it in their pieces.
Here’s Kate’s photo. What wonderful pattern and texture! Can you see that she’ll REALLY need to rely on value to depict this shape?
Well, she did just that and this was her quilt, ready for stitching. Nice!
Peggy’s photo included the same challenges.
Again, she used value and raggedy (“jagged”) edges to complete the task. Dark stitching has added some definition and she’ll add more.
As an aside, these two were seated at the same table and referred to themselves as “the fun guys.” Get it? They cracked me up.
One of the students, Barbara, LOVES to use actual texture in her work. The gnarled and twisted tree of her inspiration photo was perfect for some experimentation.
She started out composing her tree much like the other students. However, she added contrasting fabrics on both the top of her tree and underneath it.
Later, she cut into the tree, revealing those contrasting fabrics below. She also stitched tucks into place, and did quite a bit of machine stitching.
The effect was very rugged looking: perfect for a tree trunk!
Isn’t that interesting?
It was VERY fun to see these pieces come together!
Ellen Lindner
I had a fabulous time teaching “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” in western North Carolina recently. The students were talented, excited to learn, and willing to experiment. As a result, they produced some amazing quilts in our two days together.
After learning some design concepts in the morning, the fabric was flying in the afternoon of day one.
Gretchen and Tynne auditioning fabric choices.
Our class motto was “Be inspired by your photo, not controlled by it.” But, Gloria’s photo was so great that it needed very little editing.
She wisely brought the perfect background fabric. Note that it doesn’t need to have tiny branches, just something that shows the general sky color with some variation/”imperfections.”
When placing the branches, Gloria deviated from the photo, which I applauded. However, a little trial and error was called for (as is generally the case.) In the first rendition, her branches were too parallel to one another and they lacked the proper taper and lovely curving of actual branches.
She did a little tweaking and soon arrived at this, glued and ready to be stitched. Isn’t it lovely?
Becky was also inspired by branches, in particular these covered with an early snow.
Here first few branches were not bad, but also needed a little better tapering and such.
After a bit more experimenting she added in a bunch more branches with snow and the piece really came to life. Don’t you love the strong white diagonal lines of the snow? She created it by tucking white fabric under dark brown.
After initially cutting perfect leaves, Becky realized they didn’t actually look perfect in her photo and something more irregular would do the trick. Aren’t these great? This is progressing very nicely and, after a few more leaves are added, she’ll be ready to stitch.
Can you feel the Adrenalin that was building in class?!
I have many more photos to show you so watch for them in future blogs.
Ellen Lindner
Gee, this quilt has been fun to make!
After completing the foreground, it was time to address the background – again, with many hand dyed fabrics. First, I auditioned possible fabrics. I really wanted to use the darkest one, but I was worried that it would created too much contrast.
Still, I kept it in initially. As you can see, I’m tearing fabrics and laying them in horizontally.
This is what it looked like when the background was complete. I did eventually move the darkest piece. Also, I made the blue with crosses pieces (on the left) smaller after taking this picture. Like the dark fabric, it provided just a little too much contrast.
After composing and pinning the design, I glue it fairly thoroughly before taking it to the machine. That’s in progress below.
Next comes quilting and I’ll get to use my new sewing machine!
Ellen Lindner
I’ve been really anxious to use my recently dyed fabrics. In a very uncharacteristic move I actually started on a quilt using them BEFORE completing the last thing. Shocking!
I started with some sketches, and picked this one to use. Because I’ve been doing a few quilts sized 36″ x 24″, I decided to alter the sketch accordingly.
My dyed fabrics would determine the color palette. I pinned up those that seemed to go together, especially ones with green or organic colors.
I had quite a collection of compatible pieces, with a lovely yellow-green and fuchsia theme.
But wait. Was this TOO pretty and predictable? Did it need a shot of “ugly?” Something unexpected? What about something yellow-orange or orange?
YES! That little jolt of contrast is just what the palette needed! (But, maybe the blue with yellow crosses wouldn’t make the cut.)
After pinning a piece of muslin on the design wall, I drew in the major lines and began to audition what should go where. It was great fun to use large pieces of MY OWN fabrics, and things went quickly.
The leaves, before veins, are shown below.
Next came vertical veins. These were easy to add since I had already left space for them. As a result, the veins could be larger-than-needed strips of fabric that slipped underneath the earlier fabrics.
I use that “slip under technique” a lot. It’s a good way to avoid working with tiny little strips of fabric.
Then, I trimmed the remaining leaf pieces a little in order to add the diagonal veins in a similar fashion.
Don’t you love that yellow-orange?
On to the background.
Ellen Lindner
My quilt, Splash, is finally complete. It had a long intermission while I purchased a working sewing machine. But, now it’s finished and I’m very happy!
This piece is made largely from fabrics I hand painted. That involved a bit of a learning curve, as did the stitching of the stiffer-than-usual fabrics which resulted.
I did quite a bit of experimenting on this quilt, including throwing paint on it at one point!
I’m happy with the results, but after having it on my design wall for SO long, I’m quite happy to move on to the next thing.
Find out dimensions and how to audition this quilt in your home.
Ellen Lindner
SAQA (Studio Art Quilts Associates) is having an online auction of small quilts right now! This screen shot gives you an idea of the caliber of these 12″ x 12″ pieces. There are over 100 to choose from! You’ll definitely want to check them out.
Here’s my 12″ x 12″ piece, called Crotons with Attitude.
The benefit quilts are divided into groups with a different group available for bidding each week. Mine will be available for bidding starting September 24th.
Check out all the auction details.
Enjoy all the eye candy!
Ellen Lindner
I needed to depict a traffic jam for my hurricane (evacuation) quilt. Thankfully, I had a reference photo.
So, I made a colorful replica.
I thought it needed to be thick/padded to go with the texture of the raw-edged spirals.
However, the bright colors of the vehicles disappeared a little against the bright floral background. I corrected that by over painting the background with thickened dye, shown in-progress below.
Although it looked very dark here, it was really a thin blue-black. You can see the result below. Surprisingly, it’s exactly what I wanted.
In the photo above I was beginning to audition the addition of text. Of course, it will also need to be textured, so I’ll have to think about how to best achieve that.
And for those of you enduring hurricane Florence, I hope she’ll end up being a relatively minor inconvenience. Stay safe!
Ellen Lindner