Walk in the Woods - Day 3

Today I answered a lot of questions that I'd left hanging... or rather....... decisions were made in the night....

One of the stumbling blocks was the background. Normally I start with the colour blocking but I wanted to work out some other issues first, the crazy blocks...test runs if you like.

The materials I picked for the background were the pieces of eco dyed cotton I did with Maggie Vanderweit a few summers ago. I also needed some transition blocks, part tree / part background. I made 3 and I'll make more if I need them.

The other step was to take the ten crazy blocks and massage them. With a causal eye to the patterns and colour, they were cut, mixed and resewn and then cut and resew once more. Their size dropped from 8 1/2 to 7 1/2, still very useful. They are still random but they have smaller chunks of colour, more in keeping with the confetti work.

Smaller shots of colours and they transition better.
But we're not done yet.

Walk in the Woods - Day 2

5 more crazy quilt blocks, this time in lighter and more autumn colours.

When the 10 appear together there is already a feel for different parts of the canopy.

Plus a couple of Sky

Slight Diversion - a Granddaughter's Quilt

Seem like a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands ( oh really 😏 ). They've finished UFO's they've not had time.
This quilt was dropped off about a week ago. I finished it last night and didn't I get a call from another old customer......she has two.
In some ways I welcome the diversion. I can mount the quilt on the frame and when I get stuck or frustrated with the art...the quilt is there to drag my head in a different direction for awhile.

This was for a 3 yr old. I love children's quilts.
Underseas adventure.
The individual creatures show best from the backside. These are all from children's colouring pages.

Gramma will pick it up the next time she's in town.

Walk in the Woods - Day 1

Finally some sewing.
In spite of what I actually did today, this is really going to be a simple picture.
As usual the background plays an important roll and in this case it is the colour that will say Autumn.

After wavering back and forth I decided to go with crazy quilt blocks for the background.
The 'picture' will be a centre panel around 40" x 65'. That decided I started making blocks, each finishing at 8 1/2 inches.
Lots of scraps on my table still and I haven't opened the Autumn oranges ..yet.

A Walk in the Woods

I'm starting a new work..
This is a very different work as it's a lap quilt with a twist.
About a month ago while I was still in the final stages of the Yorklands project, I received an email asking if I would make a lap quilt based on one of my Art Pieces, one of my woodland scenes.

I said I would get back to them when the current piece was finished but immediately that little worm burrowed into my brain.
I don't like being between pieces. I thought I had one lined up and ready to haul out of my brain but this new one pushed it aside. So I spent the last two weeks rather lost, eating too much, sleeping at the wrong times all the while wrestling with the logistics of this piece in the face of very limited access to new materials.

I will be the first to admit I have a lot of landscape suitable materials, greens, but if I've learned anything its that the patterns don't really matter, only the colour. If you cut something small enough the pattern is lost. And I had fallen in love with the tiny when I did the SAQA effort. (Nov 2019 and the blog background)

So I threw out the idea of confetti and most raw applique work. I didn't want it to look like a panel but it had to stand up to machine washing.
I settled on the concept of a frame of 'standard' rigid quilt blocks with the 'picture' bleeding into them.
This is seen quite often in art quilts as an alternate background so why not in a full size quilt.

Hexagons? Kaleidoscope? 9 patch?
This morning I dumped my scrap bag to see just what I had to offer in the way of foliage and forest.

There are lots of small, great for chopping into those confetti styles but this time I hunted for and ironed pieces with some dimension. Anything that had some length and no less than 1.5 inches (I can sew some together). The materials covered shade, sunshine, forest floor, and mottled sky. All shades of green.
I even found cutoffs from quits of many years back.

I don't yet have a pattern/picture in mind.
We've been exchanging a few emails trying to narrow the field. I think the picture is almost there but.............