Last month I got to spend two and half days with members of the North Suburban Needle Arts Guild when I conducted my class, Design Your Own Nature Quilt. Because this group includes many non-quilters there was quite a mix of skill levels in the class. About half had never made an art quilt and several had never made a quilt of any sort! But, they all bravely dove in and they achieved EXCELLENT results.
In this class, each student brings their own inspiration photo, which means we’ve got 15 DIFFERENT projects going all the time. It keeps me on my toes, but I love it. They learn so much in this class!
I wish I had thought to photograph their inspiration photos, rather than just their resulting quilts. (These photos were showing on my computer when photographed. The quality is sometimes low, but you’ll get the idea.)
Gretchen was inspired by a photo of water lilies. She changed the nearly black water to a dark plum, which worked beautifully. She’ll use fusible web to add the skinny little grasses, and she’ll stiffen some of the leaves to make them 3D. It will be great!
Ronna also worked with water lilies, and also switched to purple water. This complementary color really adds drama and contrast. And check out how effective those black shadows are. Nice!
Val’s lily pads are coming along nicely. She’ll add some shadows to add dimension. Check out her water grasses and their reflection near the top. She spent a lot of time on them and I think they’re very effective.
This photo doesn’t do Barbara’s work justice. Her photo had three delicate flowers against a complex shadow. She had to work at providing contrast with value. Her later progress showed that she was moving in the right direction.
Nancy cut loose in a really wonderful way. She started working with solids, but needed some dappled light. As we searched her print fabrics she realized that she had quite a big selection of them, so she switched gears. This brought a lot of energy to her scene. She’ll add some thread-painted grasses in the foreground.
As I worked on my two-colored “beet” quilt, it became obvious that composition was going to be SUPER important in creating a successful piece. Because the yellow showed up so sharply against the reds and purples I knew the yellow circles would form the focal point of the piece and they’d need to be arranged…
After completing A Little Bit Tart, I had a nice collection of very interesting – and already pieced – scraps. Of course, I had to do something with them! See what I mean? I decided I could add a lot of blue as the primary color and get an interesting result. I auditioned additional blue fabrics. Then…
My friend, Gabriele DiTota, and I are having a two-person exhibit in Raleigh, NC, and we’re very excited about it We’re calling it “Fabric, Dye, and Serendipity” because that’s pretty much how we work. Both of us dye our own fabrics, and then compose them with minimal planning, (although Gabriele does more planning than I…
My current quilt is progressing along nicely, (but slowly.) I spent a LOT of time piecing the background and was quite happy with it. But, I wanted to tie the background of angular shapes into the design more. Since I planned to use large circular shapes in the foreground I thought skinny circles in the…
Oh my goodness: opening night at the 100% Pure Florida exhibit was mobbed! It was very difficult to move around, but this was one of those “good problems to have.” My piece “Lava to the Sea” was over in the corner. Not ideal, but that’s okay. It won an award of merit even so! Yippee!…
