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!
All quilters and textile artists face the question of what to do with their scraps. I mean, they MIGHT come in handy one day, so it would be good to keep them, right? But, that requires not only space, but some sort of organizational system so the scraps can be seen and used. And what…
As usual, my current quilt started with a high contrast piece of hand dyed fabric. This is all I had of it. What could I do to best show it off? The additional fabrics added above provided interest, but the original fabric swatch still seemed rather straight forward. It was kinda hard to judge against…
There were some really great quilts at the World Quilt – FL show last week. My favorite kind of quilts are those that grab your attention from across the room and draw you closer, and then when you get up close you’re amazed by the details of the piece. For me, there were several in…
This is what I see as I exit my studio. A bow. Right at eye level. It’s to remind me to turn off my mini-iron, which has no auto shut-off. It’s a very useful tool, though, since it can get into tight spots. Recently I’ve been using it to erase lines I’ve drawn with a…
For me, the hardest thing about dyeing fabric is predicting the final color. I think maybe I need a crystal ball! Case in point: I spent a lot of time getting this fabric just the way I wanted it. This is what it looked like wet. I was concerned that the delicate tone-on-tone area in…
Our 3 hour bus ride to Pompeii included some beautiful scenery. (And some napping.) Our first view of Mt. Vesuvius, across the Bay of Naples. Pompeii is not visible in this image. It’s to the right. As an engineer, hubby was really amazed by how big the city of Pompeii was. This view doesn’t show…
