Playing with Color

I love playing with color, don't you? To pull bits and pieces (and bolts) of color off my shelf or from a stack of fabric to see which colors look 'right' to me is one of the best things about quilting.

If you follow my FaceBook page, you might have seen a status in which I was irritated with my computer monitor. That's because  I ordered some wonderful new fabrics for a project inspired by my daughter's water color painting (blogged about in a post titled Design Time) and they were all wrong in person.

They're perfectly lovely fabrics, mostly from Art Gallery Fabrics, which are so fine woven and smooth. But just not the right color for this project. The new fabrics are all on the left side, above. I pulled more fabric from my stash and began sorting, mixing and matching, adding and pulling fabrics as I went.

Above is the semi-final selection. There's only one fabric from my recent purchase, the rest came from my stash! If it weren't for getting such yummy fabrics, I might have been frustrated. I'm still not sure about the greens. The bottom fabric is a natural linen that I will use as the background of the center medallion. I will probably have to find a few new fabrics or at least more of a few of the same colors as I  definitely need enough for at least one more border.

My daughter and I have been playing with color again, too. We went on a mother-daughter date to Barnes and Noble and Joanne Fabrics. She was so stinking excited! She even brought some of her own money so she could buy something of her own at Joanne's.

We each got our own very cool coloring books at B&N. Each have some creative prompts in them. Hers has some great little drawing tips. Check out the page below in her book! Very Zentangle-esque.

My book is my very own, long awaited copy of Johanna Basford's Secret Garden (Link goes to her book on Amazon). I've written about her blog before and the inspiration it gives me. Her drawings remind me of applique I'd like to do and the lines of her work inspire my free motion quilting too.

It will take me a long time to finish up all the pages in this lovely coloring book. I am looking forward to coloring sessions spent with my girl. (A certain little kid 'helped' with one flower below.) I think coloring helps with learning what colors go together and how to make a pleasing combination from a limited range of colors.

I used a combination of Derwent Inktense pencils and Prisma Color pencils for my coloring. I have to keep them sharpened well, as this book has very fine details. I wanted to use my neglected set of Gel pens, but they have been neglected so long that I can't find them.

Isn't her work fabulous? See more on her blog, where she's celebrating the success of her book and showing off her best work yet- a new baby! She has this coloring book available in several languages and formats too . I see quilts on every page. I'd like to share some of her work with you too.

 I also bought a postcard version of Johanna's Secret Garden. To enter a drawing to win one colored postcard from me and a blank one to color yourself, leave me a comment below, making sure that you aren't a no-reply blogger (Google it if you're unsure what that means, comment on your own blog to see if you have become a no-reply blogger- Is your email associated with your emailed comment?) or make sure your email is in your comment. You may also email me privately to enter (my email is on the About Amy page). Since this is just 2 postcards, anyone on the planet can enter! But if I can't easily email you, I won't enter you. Sorry.

Edited to add: The winner will be drawn next Monday, November 24th.

Zen Free Motion Quilting

I really wanted to do some fun free motion quilting today. I didn't want to work on the projects I wanted to do, just stitch for the fun of it. Martie Rowland of Purple Hat Fabrics posted a pic of a drawn Zentangle on Google+, wondering what it would look like as a quilt. I totally felt challenged to quilt it out.

"She thought she could, so she did." That's a quote I like to think of to keep me motivated on my quilty adventure.

It was the perfect design for using a longarm ruler. The 1/4 inch space around the foot made it easy to space the ending of the line. I marked a 10" square and divided into quarters, then again diagonally. Then around and around each triangle with straight lines that start from the end of the previous line and finish the line 1/4 " away where it intersects the line from the next side. (Clear as mud? It's easier than it sounds)

The big design forms from the repetition of the triangle shapes. I had to make sure I filled them in the right order to make sure the orientation was repeated. I bet there are variations of this design that are worth exploring.

It works great and I like the resulting design. I worked the design backwards from the original drawing, so the resulting psychedelic pinwheel rotates the opposite direction. That's perfectly OK.

Once I finished filling in two triangles, I shot a video.

This certainly isn't the first time someone's been inspired to use Zentangling in quilts. In fact, there's a lot of cross-over between free motion quilting and Zentangles.

Both Pat Ferguson and Susan McNeill have books out on using the meditative drawing process to inspire quilting stitches.

Martie Rowland might not be aware of it, but she lives very close to me. It's pretty neat to think of how we can "meet" someone online whom we might not know of otherwise and find they don't live to far away. It's also pretty neat to find I have readers all over the world (Hello Australia!) and I'm looking forward to visiting with my friend Robin, who is now a real-life-friend, during the Charlotte AQS show.

And in other news, my new business cards arrived! They turned out great. So much better than what I could do on my computer with those tear apart things.

I made my hubby run over to the neighbor's house to scan the QR code and make sure it worked. He tried to tell me it pulled up a naughty site, but I didn't buy it. The code went straight to the blog. Isn't that cool? They make me feel a little big for my britches, but it's a good thing I think to stretch myself a bit and lean into my work.

Design Inspiration

It is quite popular to include elements from Zentangles into quilting, or vice versa these days. I love to doodle with my quilting, and Zentangles and similar doodling gives me a lot of inspiration.

Occasionally, I will use the Bing.com daily picture from their homepage to spark a little exploration of geography with my kids. Today's picture was of a New Zealand landscape. As part of the lesson, we watched a few traditional Maori dances. These guys are fierce! But I was also intrigued by their tattoos and one link lead to another.

These Maori tattoo designs are quite adaptible to quilting, I think! I envision some applique adaptations.
 

Doodle Quilting and Ruler Work

 I'd like to think that I work best with an imminent deadline, but if the truth were told I am a huge procrastinator. We had a wedding to go to last weekend and I stayed up late quilting up a quilted linen pillow for the happy couple. First I made some guide lines with my ruler and air erasable purple pen. Then the names and a few designs were drawn out.

Then I started stitching in the middle of the pillow, and worked my way out. I did this in a kind of Zentangle style. Have you tried Zentangling? It's a lot of fun and uses many quilting designs as well as many zentangle designs lend themselves to quilting.

 Linen can get off grain pretty easily, so I used spray baste to adhere it to the batting. When I spray baste, I use Sulky's KK2000, Temporary Spray Adhesive. It's safe to use indoors and no odor. It's temorary, lasting 2-5 days, though it comes undone with ironing too. I use it for fast and small projects. Even though this will be a pillow, I used a lightweight fabric for the backing of the quilting so there's plenty of texture and dimension.

 For the background around the main design, I used my handy-dandy ruler toe and did straight lines on a 45 degree angle about half an inch apart. The hardest part was making it line up (enough) when I got back to the beginning. It saved me from doing my usual 'quilt the heck out of it' routine and then taking forever because of the density.

 

 I promise I didn't misspell her name!

"Love" is written in letters about 1/2 inch high!

This was really a lot of fun! I love to write and doodle with my sewing. I changed direction of the straight lines at the center of the sides, top and bottom. This made a nice little chevron-y thing.

Love putting in little details!

And this tiny flower near the word, "Grow". I pray they will grow old together with much joy.

 
 The couple are a bit unconventional, so I thought something less traditional would be just the thing. I do hope they like it! After all the work, actually only 4 hours or so, it snowed and we couldn't go to the wedding.

I'm linking this article with Leah Day's FMQ Friday, go check it out for more free motion quilting fun!