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.
There’s a textile exhibit coming up in which I’ll have SIX pieces. I’m super excited! The exhibit is called “Stitched, Stamped, & Sculpted,” and it will be at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, in Ormond, FL, starting this Friday, June 10th. The exhibit will run through August 22nd. And, if you’re in the…
I’ve shown you some of my fabric dyeing challenges, as well as over-dyed corrections. But, sometimes everything comes out exactly as I had hoped. This little scrap is one such example. I made it with a two step process. First, I scraped dye through a stencil in a couple places. Then, I cleaned my squeegee…
As I told you in a previous post, I’ve been needing a new sample for my class “Design Your Own Nature Quilt.” After selecting an inspiration photo and drawing a sketch, I got started. First I selected fabrics. And then got started on the background. I typically use a lot of different fabrics for the…
As I mentioned in the last post, my art quilt group, Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists, often has group challenges based on drawing inspiration from a particular photo. This was the photo we selected for our 2009 challenge. Photo credit: Martha Wolfe We decided on a vertical orientation, with measurements of 18″ x 12″. Here’s the group display….
Yep, that’s right: ugly. I recently did this cool exercise with my local fiber art buddies, the Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists. We used a book called “Paint Mojo” for prompts about making an UGLY painting. The prompts included things like using a dark neutral in certain ways, painting words, using crayons as a resist, dripping…
IQA, the International Quilt Association, has their big juried and judged show at the International Quilt Show each year. The quilts are always spectacular and it’s definitely an honor to be selected as one of “finalists.” (What they call all 400 people who have quilts in the show!) These quilts are just a small sampling…
