Lately, I’ve been really concentrating on using a “variety of scale” in the patterns and compositions I’ve been using. First, in a collage course I took with Jane Davies. After making and cropping small collages she directed us to add details with markers. (I never asked for her feedback on these, so they’re MY interpretation …
I’ve finally done it: I’ve cut into some of my favorite fabrics. This is where it all started. I wondered if I could successfully use some/all of these hand-dyed fabrics together. The one with the large orange circles is my favorites. Because of it’s scale I knew it would have to be used very purposefully….
After making small collages our online instructor, Jane Davies, asked us to visually crop them and to pay attention to negative space. Well, I’m sort of “known” for cropping things, so I was right in my comfort zone! Before: After: As expected, everything looked better when cropped. There were several reasons for this: – Due…
You can’t work with a bunch of pieces of colored paper without seeing some design possibilities! As part of my online class with Jane Davies, I was arranging, and rearranging, and rearranging again a wide array of colors and shapes. Our first assignment was to make a largish collage with multiple pieces. Mine missed the…
After studying my photo of a Christmas cactus, I decided to try abstracting it with one repeated shape. Maybe something like these “spike” shapes. Yes, I thought they worked well. My original idea was to fill the entire space with this shape, just changing the color for background grass, brick, etc. But, when I tried…
Once again, my Christmas cactus was beautiful this year. (Here in Florida it lives outside year round.) I began to imagine what an abstracted version might look like in fabric. Can’t you envision some bright, spiky red shapes? I was especially enamored with the cascading blossoms on the right side. Just to jump start some…
The supply list for my class, Design Your Own Nature Quilt, includes artistic couraage, and the ladies in Venice, FL brought it in spades! During our two day class they didn’t even whimper. 😉 But, they DID make some extraordinary quilts. Let’s start with Helen, who was taking her first ever quilt class. (These images…
After a disappointing attempt at making a quilt featuring my large-scaled hand dyed fabrics, I dramatically down sized and tried again. This time I switched the color proportions, using turquoise as my primary color and fuchsia as the accent. I still found it hard to incorporate the leaf fabric. Maybe because it had a lighter…
As I mentioned in an earlier post, a specialty fabric or two can be the primary inspiration for an entire quilt. And that’s what I wanted to try. This is sort of what I had in mind. I had intentionally dyed some large scale fabrics in order to try my hand at this. Plus, I…
Jeepers! I feel like the poster child for trial and error! While working on my latest quilt I had quite a difficult time deciding on what color to make one of the design elements. The issue was the white circles, as seen below. I loved their shape and placement, but I could see that they…