Friday, May 29, 2015

Modern, again...



Wow, did I fill pages of doodles before coming up with a plan for this piece! I even started quilting one plan, only to rip out the stitches when I realized “Well, that doesn't look good!”



This plan came about when I realized I could not stitch in the ditch around the aqua squares, because some seams were pressed to the aqua, some to the white. It just wouldn't look right. So, I thought I would quilt a star into each aqua square, and then carry them into the white space, kind of like ghost stars. It definitely helped that the piecing increments were easy...2 inch, then 3 inch and 4 inch star spaces. This meant I could stitch the echo lines using a ruler and minimal pre-marking.




I explained to the customer that I would not quilt on the circles and petal shapes until the background fill was finished. We used two layers of batting – wool over a cotton/poly blend – and I hoped that would be enough. In the end, we decided to quilt a petal shape into the large center circle, as it was 4 ½ inches across. The smaller shapes had enough fill from the wool batting to hold up on their own.




I'm crazy for the texture this piece has, from the ½ inch echo lines and the double batting!

Nothing great was ever
achieved without enthusiasm.
Emerson




Tuesday, May 12, 2015

What's Your Favorite Color?

This piece is an excellent example of how to use the color gradations in a piece of fabric to put depth in a flower. My customer has fussy cut these fabrics so that petals appear to lie under other petals, just as they would in nature. This is wonderful attention to detail.



All I had to do was stitch a few lines in matching thread colors, and they really POP!





Never mind that poppies are probably my favorite flower, or that orange is really my favorite color, but I just LOVE this piece. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.