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.
I haven’t done any garment sewing in ages, but all my luscious hand-dyed fabrics have had me thinking about using some in this way. This is the fabric that started it all. Isn’t it gorgeous? Although I’ve been dying to use it, I wasn’t sure how to use it in combination with other large scale…
After trying a pastel blue sky on my piece inspired by fall trees, I tried it with dark blue instead. I actually liked it pretty well, but I didn’t have enough bright blue to do it justice. So, I tried white. And also auditioned the idea of more twigs. The verdict: YES to the white…
I was really happy with the way my latest brown quilt was coming together. It was time to add in some curves. Yes, that was more interesting. Now what? I knew that massing colors together is often effective. So maybe I could add some dark ones near the bottom circle piece. Yes, something along these…
You know about the left and right sides of the brain, right? The left side excels at logical thinking. Categorizing, sequencing, etc. but sees things mostly black and white. The right side is the creative side. It considers many options and sees many shades of grey. Well, I’m mostly left brained. My brain automatically sorts,…
Have you seen the awesome results that can be achieved with Double Reverse Appliqué? Like very accurate portraits. March Journal: Ellen, by Ellen Lindner The portrait above was the FIRST thing I ever did with this technique! That’s how easy it is. Now, I have an eBook about this technique, which uses this awesome…
Have you made it to see the Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists’ current exhibit, yet? For those of you in the Melbourne, FL area, there’s still time to do so. The show continues through August 30th at the Eau Gallie library. See these two previous posts for lots of images: One and Two. It’s really worth…
