Portrait and Van Gogh

 I made a pillow for my nephew with his kids' silhouettes.  My niece got pictures of the boys for me since they all live 500 miles away. There is an embroidery on the cover that you can not see very well. So here's a close-up. I have a sewing machine that does fancy embroidery!

Next is a bag I did from a Van Gogh painting. The quilted piece got reversed in the translation. But the thread painting was fun.

 Here's a close-up. The Van Gogh painting is titled "Wheat Field with Cypresses".

 

Color Theory: Page Turner

            

Page Turner

14" x 21"

When I was in junior college, as they called it way back then, we had an assignment to do something with colored paper. I wish I had kept my project because it looked something like this quilt. That project is what gave me the idea for this one. Instead of straight lines for the pages, I curved them to look more like pages turning. 

to enhance the effect of pages turning, I colored some of the edges with colored pencils. It is a very subtle effect.

And to hide the center line, that did not exactly match, I made a book mark with ribbon and beads.

Since this challenge is about color theory, I chose to show complimentary colors (orange and blue) with tints of those colors.

Just to be obnoxious: I also made this quilt a couple months ago, quilted it in March. It is also complimentary colors (turquoise and red-orange.). It is paper pieced on a triangle log cabin pattern that I drew from pictures of similar quilts. Quilting is all feathered in a matching thread.

Bird of Paradise

26 1/2 " x 26 1/2"

The Sea: Beached

I named this quilt "Beached".

After some deliberation and a try at a large wave, I came up with this quilt.

The lump pictured here is supposed to be a rock (?) 

I used found shells, buttons, beads and an mother of pearl cabochon.

 The wave is made up of several small cuts of lace and tulle that was sewn together on water soluble stabilizer that was then washed out. The piece was again cut into pieces and arranged into the wave. I also used the tulle to make the small waves.

Summer Day

This quilt was inspired by the poem “The Summer Day” (See below) and given to me by Maureen. I tried three other ideas before this one because I wanted to have a grasshopper in the quilt. Said grasshopper is there (look at the label below).

I used an umbre fabric for the background because it reminded me of sunlight coming through trees. The rocks, water and grass are fabrics that were printed with that pattern which made it easy to cut out what I wanted. I also used pieces of dyed wool roving for the moss hanging from the trees. I initially wanted to make a needle felted grasshopper with the roving (didn't work).

The Summer Day

—Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Wishes: Magic in the Moonlight

Wishes.  I thought about many things I would like to see come true: world peace, the end of hunger, poverty, hate, and crime in the world. Acceptance of all cultures, races and beliefs. But none of those things will probably happen in my lifetime and the images I thought about to depict any of them seemed cliché.

I began a small quilt with the intention of illustrating different ways to make a wish: wishing well, wish bone, genie lamp, birthday cake, etc. and I did not like the result. It did not work in several places so I put it aside.

So, I decided to do something fun and uplifting. My wish is that all people have many beautiful and magical moments in their lives. The result is this quilt: Magic in the Moonlight.

This is the first time I put silk flowers and leaves in a quilt. The flowers are attached with beads. There are also beads scattered in the water. The fairies were cut out and fused using fusible web and the fairy dust is glitter.