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…
These are the words a delighted customer used after installing her purchase in her home. Take a look. Doesn’t it look like it was made to go there? Her beautiful kitchen has recently been remodeled and I think Vine Ripened looks great in this environment! One of the things that convinced her to make this…
My raw edge collage techniques involves lots of layering. Sometimes perfectly wonderful fabrics get covered by something else later. However, I don’t typically rescue those underneath fabrics. Instead, I tell myself that I bought the fabric to use and if it’s function is to support later fabrics, and to give me flexibility then it has…
I’m apparently quite enamored with these 3D Croton Leaves. They’re all part of a larger series (or installation?) called A Croton Story. Here’s Chapter 3. And a detail shot. I hope you can tell that the two halves of the leaf sort of fold up around the central vein, but with quite a bit of downward curl…
She Looked for Blessings and Found Them is the tile of my just completed self-portrait. Here’s a photo of the full quilt. It’s height matches my own, at 60″. And it’s 12″ wide. What makes this piece special are the statements I’ve stitched in telling things I’ve done over the years. Some are cute and…
I’m thinking about turning my “Notes for a Friend” concept into a class. To try out the idea I did an informal class with two friends and it was a huge success! Cindy had never worked abstractly before, but she jumped in and finished her note in no time flat. Didn’t she do a great…
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…
What do you get when you add a beautiful setting, great friends, and time to make quilts? Well, fun productivity, of course! At a recent SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) retreat I took my portable design wall, my easel, and ALL of my hand dyed fabrics. I didn’t have an idea when I left home,…