Seaside

For Sky is the Limit the theme for June was Seaside. Last year we had a similar one: Life at the beach so the risk was present that those 2 quilts would look a lot a like. Not something I wanted and I think I managed to create a fresh view of the theme. I opted to go for a more abstract view of a seaside:

Fabrics used are my own hand dyed ones, with the exception of the sailing boat, that is a commercial one. Size is 12"x12". And as it is Friday I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out what other artists have done this week.

layers

It looks like I am neglecting my blog, but there are sometimes periods in which I do not have much to show. Showing a picture in which I am auditioning fabric for a project is a bit boring :-). Anyway for EB's masterclass this month the theme is layers. I tried different sketches, but fell back on to my favorite circles. To keep it consistent to all my other circle quilts, this one will be 12"x24" when it is finished. At the moment my layout looks like this:

The circles are a combination of hand dyed and commercial fabric. Background is a charcoal hand dyed fabric.

Another layout was this:

I printed the photo and drew the circles using a sharpie. EB's comment was that it looked like an armadillo :-)). If I make it like this, this name will be stuck to it forever.

Opposites

For Sky is the Limit the April theme was Opposites and yes I know April has long gone :-). And I admit the theme sounded easy, but it took a long time before I had found a design which I liked. This is the one I settled on:

It started with a solid black background on which I used a multicolored thread. White on white fabric is what I used for the squares and for the circles I used a number of colored circles. Both the squares as well as the circles were quilted with matching, plain thread.  In this quilt I could combine the following opposites: black/white, solid/patterned, multicolored/plain, squares/circles, big/small and black/white versus color.
As it is Friday I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday. Check out the link to see what other artists did this week.

Ugandan landscape

This is how the landscape turned out after I made some changes in the fabric:

The tree on the right and the mountain range are the areas where I made the changes. The size is 20"x14,5" and as it is based on a picture taken in Uganda, the title is 'Ugandan landscape'.

Landscape

The theme for |EB's masterclass this month is landscape.  Going through my photo's this is the one I decided to start with. It is a picture taken at Mweya - Queen Elisabeth Park in Uganda. There are a couple of other ones I might use as inspiration later, but this one is on for now.

The sketch I made is this one:

For me is sketch is a simple starting point. What I create does not always look like the sketch :-). After several tries out, this is how it looks now:

I am still not certain about the fabrics I used for the mountains. They still look rather heavy. Anyway the rest is ready for the glue stick. For the tree trunks I used original Ugandan bark cloth, the rest is a mixture of my own hand dyed and commercial fabrics.
And as it is Friday, I am linking this post to Nina-Marie's blog. Check out the link and see what other artists have done this week.

Wordless Wednesday

Color

The theme for April in EB's masterclass was color. And if you think that this quilt looks familiair, you are correct :-). I used the same design as in January, only not in greyscale, but in vibrant colors this time. The first picture shows the grey scale:

And the next ones show the proces of creating the colored version:

Not really happy with this. It felt too flat and booring. While I was trying this out, I still had the idea of a leaf in my mind. I discovered that it went much better when I started thinking of it as an abstract composition. I added more different colors in it and mixed them. This is what it turned into:

And this is EB's comment:

- Rich, harmonious color, strong diagonal structure holding the arrangement of circles together, good range of values..and beautiful lines!  In fact I think it is those little skinny lines that make this piece so elegant..and the colors make it look like a rich brocade.  I like  the little hints of orange that you introduced, just a tiny bit, but enough to give a little spark.  and the variety of different purples just adds to the richness.  Using all the same purple or all the same yellow would have made it very flat.  Lovely!-