Colour Study 3, 4, & 6

     I have been working on the Colour Challenge ... just didn't get around to posting them.

     #3 is Triadic ... 3 colours evenly spaced on the colour wheel. The colours I chose are red, blue and yellow.

     Originally I had left the sky plain ... no quilting, but once I got to the corner piece which was mainly sky, I decided that I would tie all the sky pieces together and quilt them the same way. I have also not finished the edging since I am not sure what I want to do with all of the pictures yet.

     #4 is Tetradic: 4 colours which are two sets of complementary colours. In this case I chose, red & green and violet & yellow .... except it showed up blue when I took the picture. :-( The sky is a pale violet ... and looks pale blue. Hopefully when I assemble all the pieces and take the final picture with good lighting, it will be possible to see the proper colours.

     The house on the right is really a pretty shade of yellow ... kind of looks washed out here.

     # 5 is Split Complementary ... BUT the picture I chose at random was a full sky picture and I wasn't sure how I was going to work in 3 colours on basically a plain picture with a small edge of roof. I outlined the faint clouds in the photo but it still wasn't working for me so I skipped #5 and decided that my sky picture would look better in Challenge #6: Monochromatic. And I can head back and do #5 for the next set of buildings.

     So ... #6: Monochromatic: There is already a pale blue sky, a pale yellow sky and a pale violet sky; to change things up, I chose orange for this piece and because I am determined NOT to buy any extra fabric for this challenge, I really had to play around with my stash to get a good gradation of colours. I seem to be a little limited on oranges.

    
     It was at this point I decided that all skies should be quilted the same. I am also trying to match the power lines as best I can although some may jog a wee bit when connected. I think when I figure out how I am going to bind each little quilt, then you won't notice if they are straight lines or not.
I now have the top 3 pieces done and I am beginning to see a proper picture. I have noticed that for one of the houses that I actually chose the same colour twice so I will try to pick something different for the in-between block.
     Five pictures done (well, almost done as there are some fine details on the houses around the windows that probably should be added) ... four more to go.

Having Some Fun

     Although there are a couple quilted items yet to be completed, their due date is still a little ways off ... today, I just had some fun.
     I watched several Karlee Porter YouTube videos and ordered her book on Graffiti Quilting and I also have a couple of 'adult' colouring books .... so the idea was to combine the ideas and go for it.

      My first try was to 'copy' a rough outline of one of Karlee's designs which is the complete opposite of her style of quilting design. She says to 'make it up as you go' .... well, part way through, I figured out she was right. What I was doing wasn't natural to 'my flow' so my first bit of fun looks like a mess, but was worth experimenting.

      She also does a lot of couching ... which I started to try (top corner). I have a couching foot and I have a quilting foot but I do not have a combined foot .... so, that idea didn't work!!
     So lessons learned .... I am smoother going from left to right than vice versa; I like working in smaller areas; I really should use the same colour thread in the bobbin as in the top and I should see if one of the local Husqvarna dealers has the combined couching-free motion foot. Even though Karlee uses a Sweet 16 machine, I think it is possible to get a similar effect with a smaller machine.

On to the next thing .... this was more fun!

     Using an  idea from the colouring book and not pre-drawing where I wanted to go, I tried some free-form fill-in-the-spaces:

     A little closer to what I eventually want to try ... a landscape quilt done in a zen-doodle style and eventually a structures / architectural style piece of work done in a zen-doodle or adult-colouring book style. Not sure if I will like the end result but worth a try.  I still need to work on making smoother movements while machine quilting. Using the needle is NOT like handling a pencil to draw.

Finished Pillows

The pillows have found their way to their new home. The covers fit over the old pillows perfectly in spite of estimated measuring and they go along perfectly with the new living room paint colour.  All four pillows have the same backing ... as shown with the 4th pillow.

Thread

     I got some pretty good Christmas presents this year ... but the one I had the MOST fun with was a thread holder from Dad & Jan. It holds 120 spools of thread and added to the one I had previously (a mid-sized holder on the right & the two small ones on the bottom, now holding black and white threads) I not only have enough space for ALL my thread, but there are spaces left in case I find a new colour.  I seem to be a little short on yellow ...
     I dumped all the thread from the current holders, out of bowls on the sewing table and  from several zip-loc bags and happily spent an afternoon becoming thread organized.  Today while quilting, I could actually turn around in my chair and pick out the exact colour I needed without any extra searching. I could still sort some more ... from light to dark shades or vice versa, but right now this works sooooo much better than before, I think I will keep it like this for awhile!

A good start to the New Year

     On the last day of 2015, I received a wonderful email from SAQA .... and it was too early to call my daughter in Ontario or to share the news with my daughter here in Dartmouth (in case the baby actually slept in, I wasn't going to be responsible in waking her up!!). 
     I had entered two art quilts in My Corner of the World-Canada and one of them made it! I shared the news on our local SAQA FB site hoping that another member was an early riser and also had good news too.
     For those who like statistics (I do): 115 pieces were submitted by 73 artists and 40 have been chosen for the cross-Canada show. At last count, 7 from our SAQA-Atlantic group had work accepted. How awesome is that!!

     My first piece: "Crossing the Harbour" was not accepted. It shows the Mackay and Macdonald bridges of Halifax - Dartmouth, NS, as well as the Dartmouth ferry. The final piece measures 27" X 49".

     "At Anchor" will be on its way to Stratford Ontario where the art quilt show will start. It is two fishing dorries (boats) in Peggy's Cove, 32"X 24".  I was stuck for a name for this quilt, and my father came up with the suggestion ... works for me!!
     Sometimes I am really amazed at where I am headed in quilting and the fact that I get to work with some really talented art quilters / fibre artists.  I feel like a giant sponge absorbing all the techniques and methods. Hopefully I am giving as much as I am soaking in.

Christmas Stockings

     A very long, time ago (back in the '50s) my Great Aunt Irene, who lived in Detroit, Michigan, purchased felt Christmas stockings ... I think they were from a women's church guild in Grosse Pointe. I am not sure what has happened to my brothers' and sister's stockings, but I still have mine ... a little worn out (the name had to be replaced, the candy cane is missing a stripe) but well loved.

      Years later, when my first daughter turned one, I made her a Christmas stocking. I hadn't yet started to quilt, so I used pre-quilted fabric and it was my first attempt at applique. A simple stocking for a little girl. I think someday, I should add her name to it.

      The following year, a 2nd daughter arrived and I created another stocking. That was the year I was into cross-stitch.  (Prior to the girls' births, I was into macrame ... I wonder what kind of stocking I would have come up with then??) Unfortunately, the toe didn't quite get the roundness I was going for. A prediction perhaps ... when she reached elementary school age, she loved trains; we had engines, cars and tracks winding through the family room!

      And that was the end of stockings for a very long while .... years later when Kate returned home along with her dog, of course, the dog required a stocking!

     This year, with the arrival of a grand-daughter, it was time to make a new stocking and while I was at it, make one for my step-granddaughter as well.
     Ari (age 6) loves My Little Pony and Minions, and since her Dad likes to rhyme her name with banana, that was added too. Ari informed me yesterday, that the Minion, named Steve, likes bananas too. I picked up a pre-made Christmas tree and star to add a little bling. The background is free-motion quilted and the pony, banana, name and minion are raw-edged machine appliqued with additional thread-painted details .... oh yes, and her favourite colour is purple!

      Baby Charlotte doesn't yet have favourites, but her Dad calls her his 'little bird' (she made chirping noises during her first couple months of life). The colours coordinate with her bedroom colours and the quilt I made for her a year ago. The patchwork background is free-motion stipple; the name was a little more of a challenge (I don't have an embroidery machine) ... I penciled in her name along the side and then followed the markings with a satin-stitch.  I attempted making fabric snowflakes to applique but on a recent trip to a fabric store saw that they had beautiful silver snowflakes that worked much better.  It's hard to see but the little bird with its flowing tail has silver-thread highlights along some of the feathers and on the eye.

     That should have been the last stocking, but Kate decided at the last minute, if the girls were getting proper stockings, then her husband should have one too.  Using up fabric leftovers from my stash, and now using my expertise on stocking construction, one more stocking was created.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas Preparations

Busy! Busy! Busy!  and all of a sudden it is a week before Christmas.
     My daughter, Liz, repainted her condo: Wild Water (a dark blue), Universal Grey, and Ophelia (a cream/beige colour) and decided she would like new cushion covers to match. She first told me that she wanted 2 cushions at 25 inches square ... but after making the top for one, I figured something wasn't right. I'd never seen cushions that size at her place. On Skype, I had her remeasure ... ooops, she meant to say 15 inch square cushions. And could I make them kind of geometric, .... I have worked on two 15 inch square cushions and two 16 inch cushion covers.

     This is based on a Delectable Mountain pattern ... I ended up making two covers the same since I wanted to use both the grey and the creamy-grey colour as the background to the blue ... which led to enough blocks for 2 cushions.

     Lesson learned: I am not that great at Y-corner seams .. resulting in quilting the whole darn thing to make it lie flat! I like the shadow look of the blocks.

     I used the same fabric for all 4 cushion covers. This was the block that was originally 25 inches. Originally the pattern repeated with 2 blue, 2 grey, and 2 beige on each corner block ... I eliminated the extra grey and beige and sewed each block through the centre to shrink the length. A bit of quilting on top and it is ready to be stuffed.
      The pillows are at her place, so it will likely be awhile before I get to see them 'finished'.
They are her Christmas gift ... but  I know she never checks my blog, so showing them here won't spoil the surprise.
     I wasn't quite done though. She also painted her bedroom .... and could I make some pillow cases in the same colours but add a bit of white too!

     They don't quite go with my bedspread .... probably should have turned it over and had a white background.  Two pillow cases have the same fabric as the living room cushions; two cases are plain navy/white/grey.

     More projects are being completed ... pictures to follow soon!