I wanted green !!

I thought I had a wonderful, clever idea ... when you mix blue and yellow, you get green. So I planned to do just that and play with all the different shades of green ... I cut yellow and blue organza in wawy stripes and arranged them on a piece of white cotton. Do you see any green in this picture ???

 Well - I don't see any green, too ... Lesson learnt: if you layer different colors of organza, you'll get some pretty nice different shades - of the colors you used. But not necessarily the color you were looking for ;-))

Even when there's no green in there, I still liked the piece - so I quilted it with a wide free-motion zig-zag and bound it. Maybe I put something onto it - what do you think?

Reflection from Frauke

This theme was a pretty hard one - not technically, but emotionally ...

My first idea was a pictorial reflection on water, I take pictures of them all the time. But ... something kept nagging at me. And more and more I realized I needed, I wanted to do something different.
So, my quilt shows the two different reflections of one and the same person: the top part shows what the world sees: an energetic, happy, active person. The bottom part shows how this same person sees its own self: a lonely human being, numb, no energy left. The red-and-white strip between the two is the German version of "Do not cross beyond this line" ;-))

A huge "THANK YOU !!" to Stefan Wensing, he allowed me to use one of his pictures he published on his blog. Just click on this link to see more of his work - he does wonderful work !!

"Light" - the third challenge

Before I started writing this post, I looked through the already posted "light"-themed quilts. And I had to grin when I saw Madalene's quilt ;-)) One glimpse at my quilt, and I guess you know why I grinned ?

Some of you may know that I mostly work with bright, vivid colours. But after I thought about my theme for a while, I started to ask "what if?" What if I started with white and only used some light, muted colors? I guess I just wanted to know whether I could work with such a restricted palette!
My starting point were white linen and white batting - and my embellisher. Next came white cotton jersey, a crinkly quality. And a light blue very thin curtain fabric made from polyester. The cotton was felted on the piece; the blue polyester was put on the back and felted through. Then I painted the bottom part with a light green acrylic. I added quilting to give an idea of hills in the foreground. The last step by machine were the rays of light, done with a metallic thread and straight stitching.
For a bit more interest, I glued the white flowers on. I'm sorry about the not-so-good-picture, but I had to hurry ;-)) a thunderstorm was coming up!

Serendipity - oh yes !

To be honest - I had a really hard time to come up with an idea for this challenge ;-)) After a while and lots of fruitless consideration ... and while I started to give my studio a major spring clean ... a first vague idea started to form in my head. What if I only used what I "find" around? And make do? Hmmmmm ... a very old UFO turned up.

I cut it down to size ... and stared at it ... till I realized that it is spring outside ! Lovely weather - the sun is shining, fresh green everywhere! So - how about quilting plants?

After I was done with my quilting, I looked at my piece and liked it - so far. Of course it was not finished ... so I went back to organizing my studio. And yes, another lucky incidence happened - I found some artificial flowers I bought some years ago. I teared them apart ...

... and added some stems with couching. After I did the binding, I added the leaves (by sewing) and the flowers with hot glue. And here it is - my finished quilt "Serendipity" !!

A very old UFO and some other remnants - and the result is a happy, cheery little quilt! The size is about 16" x 14".
I'm pretty much relieved that I got my quilt done in time this time ;-)) - and I'm looking forward to see what you all have been up to!

Connection - late, but: finished !!

Phew - thanks for your patience! Yesterday evening I made the last finishing stitches on "Connection" ;-))
After the theme was named, I knew immediately I wanted to do something about the emerging connection between the 6 of us. Finding the idea took me a while ... how about doing 6 different figures?

The first picture shows the six different figures, already ironed on white fabric. Five of the six were cut from my own hand-dyed fabrics, just for the dark purple I used a print. Now - how do I connect them ? Off to my yarn stash - and yes ! I found a beautiful colour combination. And started to do loops of yarn - by handstitching. Pretyy soon I realized - no way I get this finished the way I want to do it in time! Hand-couching takes so much time ... but I love the look of it.

After the hand-couching was done, I did small-scale stippling, from the outside in, added some more areas of stippling inside. For the finishing touches, I did one line of zig-zag on the outside first to stabilize the edges. As I did not like the plain white edge, I stepped yarn on top of the zig zag.

To me, this first challenge was truly about connecting. The six figures stand alone on background, but the yarn ties them together. That is exactly what I hope to become true for us, too!