Historically, I haven’t been a fan of red and yellow combinations, but for some reason, I now find myself drawn to them. I still think they’re a little jarring, but it seems that I now like that. As evidence, I recently dyed fabrics with these colors. I created a variety, hoping I could use them…
The students in my “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” class did really excellent work. Their task was to be INSPIRED by their photos, but not to actually copy them. Eldora had a beautiful photo showing a ton of beautiful flowers, so she wisely cropped it way down. She did a great job depicting the foliage…
I recently taught two classes. One was “Design Your Own Nature Quilt,” and the ladies did a great job. The supply list includes artistic courage and they did not disappoint. After a morning learning about design and preparing a sketch, the students start creating their fabric collages in the afternoon. It can be a little…
I had some interesting scraps left over from Waiting for the Lightnin’ Bugs. As you can see, they included many skinny triangles, so I knew that would drive my design. And, because they were so skinny, I knew I’d use a collage technique, rather than piecing them. After creating a background, I started with the brightest…
My latest quilt is complete! As you can see, I decided to square off the edges. These colors are true. My earlier ones were shot in the studio. This one got proper lighting. The dark colors of the quilt, combined with yellow streaks, reminded me of a cool evening, in VA, watching the lightnin’ bugs…
Possible duplicate post When putting away hand dyed fabrics, I noticed that my least favorites, the dark muted pieces, actually looked pretty good together. I decided to make a quilt with them, and to include a few accents of lighter colors. I was headed for a quilting retreat, so I packed up my potential fabrics…
As I started a new quilt, I looked to my hand dyed fabrics for inspiration. I pulled out a few that I thought might spark some interest. Uh, no. It all seemed pretty ugly. But, I was intrigued by the large scale black and white piece. Could I work with something like that? It was…
For the first time I worked on two quilts at the same time, finishing them up very close together. Here’s the latest, Twigs. I’m very happy with it. And here’s a detail shot. The dark twigs were done in the dyeing stage. The white ones were added after piecing, with acrylic paint. As you can see,…
A little bit of black can often add just the right touch to a quilt. And in the case of this piece, I NEEDED to add more black to go with what was already there. I liked the idea of playing up the sharp little lines on the left. But, how to best accomplish that?…
As I continued auditioning fabrics for my latest quilt, I was thinking mostly about value contrast. (Light and dark.) This is where I left off. I could see that it needed some darker values to add some punch. What about some dark green on the right? Yes. I thought it would work. Plus, I…