adventures of a quilting diva

While I enjoy the big picture looking at paintings and quilts, what I am most intrigued by are the close-up details: the brush strokes and stitches, the weave of the fabric and the facets of the embellishments. So direct from Ontario, California, I bring you a close-up look at the details of a few of my favorite quilts. I hope you are as fascinated and inspired as I am by these intricate works of art from Road to California 2010.

Vases by Suzanne Marshall, MO

What I love most about Suzanne’s prize-winning quilt is the way she outlined each applique piece with hand embroidery.

The Sky’s the Limit by Linda MacDougall, CA

Linda MacDougall pays such attention to each exquisite detail in all her quilts. (Her Garden Party quilt won 2nd place in the Innovative Traditional category. You should be able to see it and the other winners soon on the Road to California website.) Notice the beads and crystals she used for the tiniest ice cream scoops.

I also like the way the iridescent sheer changes the colors of the fabric underneath it.

Flowers Galore by Cindy Shoop, CA

These pieced center circles look like stacked cover buttons or dimensional applique. It really makes a difference compared to plain circles.

Inner Beauty by Cathleen Miller, NM

Look at how the trapunto flowers and leaves tie the appliqued borders into the rest of this magnificent quilt.

When you take a closer look, you’ll see that it’s details like these that take a great quilt and make it a fantastic quilt! Visit the Road to California website to see photos of the rest of this year’s winning quilts.

Celebrate the ordinary, extraordinary, and everything in between with me in 2010!

Although I only reached 50 blocks or so before I called it quits in my Dear Diary 2006 quilt, I’m now ready to give it another try.

One quilt block per day, inspired by each day’s activities. Sketched, sewn and quilted each day. Every several days I’ll sew them to each other so that I won’t lose any blocks. By January 1, 2011 the quilt will be complete.Here’s my journal, all ready to go. My daughter and I have broken it in so that I won’t have any empty sketchbook fears come January 1.

Come back and visit my blog in the new year. I’ll post my Dear Diary 2010 progress for you to see.

Christmas time is often a busy time, but it is a beautiful time as well. It’s probably too late to start a Christmas quilt (at least for Christmas 2009), but you can still take in the sights and get some inspiration from the season’s festive color palettes.

Stroll through a few Christmassy shops and see what colors the trees are decked out in this year. Maybe you’ll discover just the right color palette for your first quilt of 2010.

Or maybe there’s a red & green quilt in your near future. Check out my “box of ornaments” above. 3 reds + 3 greens = 9 different red & green combinations. Not all of them are what we think of as traditional for Christmas, or even for red & green quilts, but it’s interesting to consider which patterns you might choose for each one and why.

I think it would be fun to make a Christmas tree quilt out of the bottom left combo. Which combo do you like best and what kind of quilt would you make from it?

Today I’m baking Christmas cookies. You don’t need to plan very far in advance to bake cookies. Just make sure your kitchen is clean and stocked with the ingredients you need. In an hour or two they’ll be ready to enjoy.

On the other hand, making a quilt takes not only the right ingredients but also much more time. Some people can make an entire quilt in a day or two, even an afternoon. Most quilters I know need weeks or months to complete their quilted masterpiece. So although I am baking cookies this morning that will be eaten at my daughter’s class Christmas party this afternoon, the quilt I am working on tonight will make its debut next spring.

I’m also thinking about designing a fish quilt. See the cookies on the bottom left part of the tray? Those are my version of Christmas carp. Carp is traditional for a Czech Christmas Eve dinner. Since I’m vegetarian this is the only carp my family and friends will get to see this Christmas. Although perhaps next Christmas there will be a Christmas carp quilt.

Some of the fish below are carp, but some are koi. I’m going to have to do a bit more research before I hit the sketchbook. Happy Holidays!

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned looming deadline to jump start a person’s creativity. As you can see below, my African Folklore Embroidery, A Beadiful Day, is finally completed and ready to take a road trip {to Road to California that is}.Genuine deadlines work better than fake ones, but in the absence of a real deadline it can’t hurt to make one up anyways.

If you’re in the neighborhood, drop by and visit the African Folklore Embroidery exhibit at Road to California, January 14-17, 2010 in Ontario, California. To learn more about African Folklore Embroidery visit the African Folklore Embroidery website.

This Christmas, why not remember the festivities large and small by creating quilt blocks for each one. My tree block at left is from my Dear Diary quilt. It’s actually a January block, “Taking down the Christmas Tree” but it could just as easily depict a tree going up.

Make blocks for baking cookies, shopping for presents, attending a Christmas pageant, and more. Just about anything, really. Then make a New Year’s Resolution to piece the blocks together and quilt them so that next Christmas you can reminisce and enjoy your quilterly creation.

OK, I’m showing my city roots here, but I recently found this stalk of brussels sprouts at Trader Joe’s (TJ’s, what’s not to love!) and I just couldn’t resist.  I’d never seen the way they actually grew before. Maybe I imagined they grew in rows like cute little mini cabbages?

What a great combination of shapes! A brussels sprouts stalk would be a lot of fun to use as a reference for a yummy wall hanging. You could do it all in shades of green or mix it up scrappy style in any colors you choose. It would make a wonderful abstract piece of art.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends (and to those of you from other countries too. We all have so much to be thankful for!) If you find yourself cooking up a feast this week or simply eating one, be sure to take a few moments to to savor the shapes and colors of the holiday food, because you just might find the inspiration for your next quilterly masterpiece. And if you haven’t seen it before, be sure to check out my first Quilt Your Veggies post for a veggie-licious color palette and a fab Boston Lettuce quilt.

word cloud created at www.wordle.net

Wow… what great color palettes everyone selected! Such fun to read through them all! Actually makes me want to shut down the computer and go back to my studio and play with fabrics. You are the best! I have to say I am very inspired.

Autumn colors and earth tones are some of your best-loved palettes, as well as pink & green and aqua & red. Orange, purple & green is another fav. Brights are popular and so is the combo of yellow & blue. I love Lynne’s comment that her favorite colors would have to be all the colors in the rainbow plus turquoise, jade, pink and yellow.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get into a color rut. It’s fun to try out some different colors every now and then, even if just for a small project before going back to the tried and true.

If you’re looking for some color inspiration check out your fellow readers’ favorite color palettes in the responses for the post, Pocket Full of Posies, and there are also a few more on the post Cut Smart! (part two). Who knows, you just might discover a new favorite!

The words in the word cloud above are all the favorite colors you submitted last week. The dissonance between the words and the actual colors of those words in the image above  is interesting. The concept could make an intriguing art quilt.

happy quilting! =(^_^)=

Who can resist the sheer fascination of bubbles? Whether you are attracted to their swirling shimmery colors, the mesmerizing way they move, or something altogether different, bubbles would make an intriguing quilt subject.

You needn’t feel intimidated by the bubbles’ transparency or their dancing colors. You don’t need to be as literal as a scientific illustration (unless you want to).

Here’s a little sample quilt of mine from my upcoming Bling Your Bindings! workshop. I used Kurumi cover buttons and Hoffman Bali Batiks to create my stylized bubbles, giving a suggestion of bubbles rising up into the air or perhaps in an aquarium tank.

And of course, don’t forget that bubbles make a fantastic (and super easy) free motion quilting design!

Whichever direction your quilty bubbles take you is sure to be a splash!

I don’t know about you, but somehow we ended up with literally mountains of candy after Halloween was all said and done. That got me thinking about candy quilt blocks … maybe some orange and black taffy would look nice.

I always like to consider the shapes of the designs I choose. Chocolate bars are delicious, but their shape is slightly on the boring side. Unless of course, you have some fantastic fabric to spice up their wrappers!

Taffy makers come up with all kinds of neat designs for their candies, and even the wrapper itself adds a great deal of interest to the shape. Salt water taffy is just as fun to look at as it is to eat!

Here’s the sketch I came up with. You can see my first attempt through the other side of the paper. I was trying not to make it too tiny, but that pattern would probably turn out an 18″ block, and I’m more of a small block gal.

My second sketch was just what I wanted: fun, a little bit wonky, and exactly the right size. That’s unusual for me. Most of the time I draw dozens of sketches and then have to scan and resize my favorite one on the computer.

I only drew the one side of the wrapper firstly because I ran out of room, and secondly you only really need the one pattern piece anyway. You can just trace it twice. If you turn the drawing just a little so that the wrapper sticks straight up it could be a radish or a perfume bottle!

Don’t the candy appliques look yummy? I decided to go for Christmas taffy instead of Halloween taffy. Halloween is all finished for this year and I just know my enthusiasm wouldn’t last long enough for me to make much progress on this quilt.

These candies are a lot of fun to make. I might even finish this quilt in time for Christmas. I can’t wait to try the taffy pattern out on other fabrics in my stash.