“What do key lime pie and beautiful quilts have in common?” Answer: It’s the COMBINATION of ingredients that make it work. This is just one of the concepts students learn in my “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” class. The supply list for this class includes “artistic courage.” And my St. Augustine students definitely packed theirs.
After a morning learning about design, they sketched designs inspired by their own photos. Since they learned that nearly every photo can be improved, there were lots of changes and tweaks considered. Finally, it was time to bring out the fabric and their compositions began to emerge.
Here’s Karen’s inspiration photo.
And her quilt, nearly complete (except for the quilting.)
Isn’t it great? She wisely moved the focal point off-center for more interest. And the addition of orange and purple add a wonderful spark.
Sharon brought a photo of a favorite view in Yellowstone National Park.
She did an excellent job capturing the scale and drama of the scene.
Celeste chose a challenging photo, due to the multitude of flower shapes.
However, she edited her sketch to include only her favorite parts and got to work.
She made good progress by the end of the class. (She wasn’t crazy about the sky fabrics and intended to switch them out once she got home.)
Joanne worked with a great photo which needed very little editing. I neglected to get a shot of her inspiration photo, but you can see a glimpse of it on her table.
The photo below shows her quilt after her first little bit of quilting.
Joanne will add petal definition to her flowers with the addition of black stitching. (Yes, she’ll need her artistic courage for that, but she can practice first on a sample.)
I really tried to disuade Rosemary from using the photo below as her inspiration. Just because of ALL THOSE LITTLE curly doohickies! (What is the plural of doohicky, anyway?) However, after discussing it, she decided she was willing to spend the time it would take to manage all those tiny shapes.
It was looking really great by the end of the second day.
She’ll experiment with ways to work the little curly tendrils. Maybe couched thread, bent wire, or some other invented technique. She’s willing to put in the time to do the needed trial and error. And, of course, she’ll add some pale twisted yellow (?) curly-Qs in the center. I think it’s going to be pretty spectacular.
I do so love teaching this class! And, if you’re interested, I have an online version going on right now. We’re about half way through part one, the design portion, with two and a half weeks remaining.
Ellen Lindner
Related posts: Cropping as a design feature. And more cropping (Both of these are quick reads, and worth checking out.)
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