Work in Progress - Starting Lady in the Mask

A fellow artist asked if I would take one of her paintings and recreate it as a quilt. I jumped at the chance and I am posting some images of my progress. Thefinished project is to be a surprise gift for her husband. So SSSHHHHH!

The first step was to select a color scheme as her artwork was done in brown pencil. I identified a palette of teal blues or purples and decided to go with the blues.

Next the image was enlarged on graph paper.

My third step was to create several feathers. I knew if I was successful with the feathers I would be inspired to go further.

Then I let my obsessive, compulsive nature take over and I started to work...Stay tuned for the results

Too Blue

This is a quilt of two blue herons. Once I started this quilt I was inspired by a story line from Amy Tan's Book "The Joy Luck Club" ..."This feather may look worthless but it comes from afar and carries with it all my good intentions."

The background of this quilt once again used the watercolor pieced technique using 2" squares and blending colors. The birds were were machine quilted and appliqued onto the background. More machine quilting was done to simmulate clouds and then additional hand embroidery helped to define the images.

Enjoy!

COLOR MY WORLD

COLOR MY WORLD is a watercolor art quilt inspired by my friend Roberta. Roberta left me a ton of precut fabric squares and instructions on making a watercolor quilt.

It is called a watercolor quilt because each piece of fabric is treated like a dab of paint and you try to run colors or design lines from one square to the next to create a slightly distorted but flowing pattern.

THANKS TO ROBERTAs generousity, I created this watercolor art quilt measuring 18" x 30". If you look closely you will find butterflies, a frog, bees, flies, ladybuys and 2 hummingbirds! Enjoy.

Collage

I recntly went back to my files and compiled a couple of collages to showcase some of my quilt projects. I thought that I would post these pictures to my blog site for future reference.

Birds In Flight

This is my latest quilt project.

BIRDS IN FLIGHT

I used a technique called FRACTURING. An overlay design is created to identify fracturing lines. You use these lines to redefine the graphic by changing colors or tones.

I used a fractured background of just blacks and whites and then extended the fracture lines through the birds and fractured the colors into blues, greys and purples. The final design was a little too busy so I tried to define the lines around the birds with black embroidery and used the purple banner as a softener.
It all sounds rather complicated. Well, it was...but I learned alot.

If you can not read the banner¨, it says ¨BRIGHTEN YOUR JOURNEY IN THE COMPANY OF FRIENDS¨

MAKING FACES!

I finally finished my animal quilt entitled MAKING FACES. As my friends know, I am a dog lover so this project was dear to my heart. I am the mother of 4 rescue dogs and 1 planned adoption! I learned some new quilting techniques and had a lot of fun with the design. This quilt is 36" x 55" and machine quilted.

This is a photo of my sister Anita and her dog Buddy in the swimming pool!! I then made it into a 12" x 12" quilt. She finally received her birthday gift this past weekend so now I can share her photos with you. I love the way it turned out. Happy Birthday sis!