Lines

The theme for EB's masterclass this month is lines. If you have been reading my blog for a long period, you know that I have a number of quilts with this theme. I made some sketches of which this one was the best:

The basic idea I liked, but the combination of these squiggly lines did not really thrilled me. But as you know, something you just have to give an idea a bit more time :-). And that is what I did. This morning I knew what I wanted to do with it. It had to be more simple and much bolder. This is the fabric sample I made:

The sample is small, about 15"x 6,5", but I can see this in big size like 40"x 15"or 20". This is EB's comment: 
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wow that's really strong, bold and definitely linear!

it would look very good horizontally too...

it has a very modern feel to it, clean and classic.

I think it works very well...at first the impact hits you but then you begin to let your eyes explore all the ins and outs..

It's well balanced, it's striking and interesting.

The only thing I'd check, student 3, is the value pattern.  How strong is this if you desaturate?  could it lose impact in a very low light situation?  I like the way the grey is darker than the red in places, and lighter in others  - if you do this one again you could exaggerate that effect.

Otherwise it looks great!

I'd be careful with the quilting pattern and give it some thought....print out a few pictures and draw possible quilting designs on top of them....the quilting will be very obvious so it will be important to get it right.

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I admit that I had not desaturate the picture before I send it to EB and she is correct. Here is the b/w version of the picture:

The red and grey are too close in value. Something I have to keep in mind when I dye the fabric.

new project - new group

If you follow my blog you know that I belong to several groups. This motivates me to make quilts tailored to specific themes. For one of my groups - Free-spirit-artists - I started working on a new project. The theme is lines and on the picture you can see the beginning of it. Okay, I admit you can not yet see much, but that will come later :-)Right now I am also involved in setting up a new online group which will work with a bi-monthly theme. If you are interested in joining us, please leave a comment and make certain that I can reach you. The 'noreplyblogger'  address is not very usuable :-)

New line quilt

I make a lot of small quilts - love the size of 12"x12" - but the last couple of days I have been quilting a big one. Size at the moment is around 42"or 44" square. It is one of my hand dyed pieces of fabric and to be certain that my quilting at the end is the same size as at the beginning I am using Golden quilting paper as a template. It will take a couple of weeks before this quilt will be completed as in between I will be working on smaller ones as well. Stay tuned :-)

some more lines

If you read my blog on a regular base, you know that one of my themes this year is lines. Here are pictures of my most recent finished quilt. Years ago when I was in Uganda I bought a couple of yards of bark cloth (Check out this link to find out more about bark cloth.) and I have to admit that I had hardly used it. Time to change this. I picked a piece of bleached Kona cotton and placed a piece of bark cloth on it:

As I am working with the theme lines, the quilting was done is simply lines :-). Here is a close up of it:

And this is how it looked when it was done:



As a background it is oké, but it needed something to catch the attention. For a couple of years I participated on a regular base in swapping dye samples. Each sample was 2,5"x2,5" and I think I have a couple of thousands of them. I don't need the samples anymore because since I took several dyeing classes with Carol Soderlund I know how to dye every color I want. I picked out a number of squares, fused them to Bondaweb and cut squarish circles out of them. Arranged them on the quilt and stitched them. And this is how it turned out:

Size of this quilt is 22"x12". Maybe not the first idea when you think of lines but who said that lines have to be straight?

Silent Water

For the Free Spirit Artists group my theme for the coming year is lines. This may sound boring, but there are many ways in which you can use lines. Late 2010 I made a journal quilt using stitched lines and paint. The fabric was folded and stitched like that, next step was to paint the fabric, let it dry and remove the stitched lines. This is how the journal quilt looked when it was finished:

I really loved this technique and wanted to do it again on a bigger scale. So I picked a half yard of fabric which I had dyed. Don't ask me which color I used because this was somewhere in 2011. Stitching all those lines was so boring that regularly it was put away to do something more interesting :-). After many months the stitching was finally done (July 2012) and this is a detail picture of how the back looked like:

And this is how it looked from the front:

Finally it was time to play. I pinned the fabric on top of a foam board and opened several Lumiere paint bottles, shimmering pearl, blue, turquoise and a bit of pale green. This is how it looked after the painting:

And now the fun part, removing all the stitches and ironing it. At last you could see how it was going to look:

Time to start quilting. As the main focus of this top was lines (and this was months before I decided to work with this theme) the quilting lines just followed the painted lines. Interesting, but it needed a bit more. I decided on adding turquoise beads on it. But before I could add these, the quilt had to be blocked and sleeve added as well. I did not want a traditional border around it, but decided to do a facing. This made the quilt a bit narrower, but that was okay. When this was done I ordered several different types of turquoise beads - and of course did not use all the different ones - and this is how it looks now:

From beginning to end it almost took 2 years to complete it, but I am happy with it. The title Silent Water refers to the reflection you see on water, not knowing that the falling beads will disrupt the silence quite soon. Who said that lines were boring? :-)
This quilt is the first one in my series of Lines. Size is 17"x37".