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.
When quilting my latest piece I decided to mimic the swirls/curves in the background. In addition to machine quilting, I also added some hand stitching around several of the curved shapes. My main reason for doing so was to add contrast to the white curves in the light areas. I intended to stitch around all the…
Continuing on with quilts from “Stitched: Embracing the Quilt as Fine Art.” All art quilts were made by Florida members of SAQA, Studio Art Quilt Associates. More images to come! Ellen Lindner You may also like: “Stitched: Embracing the Quilt as Fine Art” – Part One “Stitched”…
At the recent SAQA retreat, you could work on your own projects or take time out for one of the many excellent demos. One of the first I attended was put on by Sally Dutko and Pam Richardson, as they explained their process to us. Sally’s work was used for most of the in-progress examples….
Everyone loves the apple project in my “Double Reverse Applique” class, and the Thimblebuddies of Port St. Lucie, FL were no exception. I did a class with them this past week and the results were great! The technique requires a little concentration, especially at first. This mother-daughter duo shared a table and made great progress….
I’ve been having SO MUCH FUN working on my current quilt! It’s an abstracted design, which always pushes me outside of my comfort zone. But, I love the way it’s coming together. First, I needed a design. I took my cues from a Quilting Arts TV segment featuring Pat Pauly. She suggested cutting up a…
I’ve always wanted to see a koala and I got several chances to do so in Australia. They are so adorable! They sleep about 20 hours each day, so of course, all the ones we saw were doing just that. However, we got to get super close to them at the Sydney Zoo. We weren’t…
