My word of the year for 2013 is “Nurture”, and part of that goal was to nurture creativity by playing more. At the time I didn’t know what form that would take, but over the last few weeks, I’ve given it a good run.
I told you about my workshop with Victoria Findlay Wolfe – that was tough but I pushed through it. I’ve also been working on a few projects simultaneously to push myself out of my comfort zone.
My first project is a guild challenge for the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild. We were each assigned a season (I got Fall) and are supposed to make a quilt from it. I started out wanting to recreate a photo in a mosaic style, using diamonds instead of squares.
I’d been working on it off and on for a couple of weeks, and got about this far:
They kind of look like trees to me… sort of. This could turn out really cool or really terrible, but as I have been looking at it, I’m starting to doubt it. I’m not ready to just trash it, but I don’t think I will finish it in time for the challenge if I keep going. So I decided to stop.
In the midst of making that decision, I started working on another project, this time a collaboration with artist Catherine Matthews-Scanlon. She’s been working on a coloring book for artists, and I saw one of her pages posted up. I loved it so much and thought it would make a really interesting quilting pattern, so I asked her if I could stitch it up and she said yes. Here’s the first one that I did:
This is actually the lower half of the coloring page, and this was all done freehand after tracing the image with a blue washout pen. I have many other ideas to experiment with – changing the thread color, painting the image with Inktense pencils, maybe even doing some thread painting. I washed and dried this one to see what would happen; it definitely needs blocking, but I am just using this one as an experiment. I’m going to film Quilt It! with Jodie Davis next month, and I’ll be talking all about this collaboration and how I create these images from Catherine’s work.
In the midst of doing this collaboration, I got a new idea for my CMQG Challenge, which gave me the confidence to abandon the mosaic for the time being. It’s a 3-dimensional piece that’s 24″ x 36″, in some really cool jewel tones for fall.
I chose this color palette:
From top to bottom (and these are all Robert Kaufman Kona): Amber, Teal Blue, Chinese Red, Curry, Peridot, and Berry.
After settling on this palette, I was hunting for a backing or binding fabric in my stash when I found this Australian Aboriginal print:
This is why quilter’s have stash. This is an amazing find, isn’t it? It’s why I cannot abandon commercial prints, try as I might. Some things are too lovely not to use buy.
So what am I doing with these solids? Well I decided to quilt up some leaves:
The thread is Superior So Fine 40wt variegated, and it has some purple, blue, red, and turquoise in it. I quilted these up and then cut them out using a combination of pinking shears and a rotary cutter with a pinking blade.
I think they turned out awesome!
Now I have to work on quilting the top, which because of the leaves, needs to be a very simple pattern.
I hope you’re stretching yourself this week!