I'm going right to the fabric store and try mixing fabrics to make different colors.  Wonder why it didn't work.  Penny

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?

Wow!! I work sooooo slowly...Part of the problem was that I'd scrapped my ideas a week ago when I realized I had very little time. I'd hoped to do a quilt-as-you-go piece, inspired by Ann Brauer's work. (Article about her in latest Quilting Arts; her studio/shop is about 45 minutes from where I live.) Then...I really had no time to work last week, except one evening, when I created this as a jumping off point:

Thought I might just slash and re-piece until I came up with something I liked. But I didn't get to a place that I liked. Got as far as what's posted below, and decided that was too busy.

So...I cut up what was left of the original piece and made it into a leaf. Then added the rest. The background is a piece from a class with Jan Myers-Newbury.

I still have some work to do at the top. And then it needs to be quilted. Hope to get to that this week!


As usual, it's been a learning opportunity! :)  I hope to develop a main idea next time and let that inform my work.

I really enjoyed making this quilt (see the picture below.  I lost the dialogue that went with it somehow).   I had lots of handdyes left over from a research project and had seen a quilt many years ago at a quilt show in Maine  that was my inspiration.  Now I'd like to make more leaves, sans the rectangles, in a bunch of crazy color  combinations a la Andy Warhol.  If I could only get someone to cook and clean for me, I could do nothing but sew and design.  What I need is a retreat or  maybe a transformation.

Oops.  The photo didn't make my previous post.  Here is my green leaf.

Start From Where You Are

Green - in the chaos of our lives. I think this started simmering unconsciously when I commented to Carol at our Rosalie Dace workshop that It's Not All Black and White (something Rosalie was saying) might make a good quilt name. I like my B & W stash. As I wrote down thoughts about green and then tossed my original ideas for the challenge, as usual, I noted that I see green as signifying newness, a beginning. I have also been recently reading a number of life guidance books about personal change and growth, especially when facing choices. Thus my title.These are all commercial fabrics, some "artier" than others. I got to practice making a thin line insert and an even thinner one, both vertical black, and I did 2 couched lines of green yarn. I also did my first faced finish. Yea! The weakest point is most of the green quilting lines don't show strongly unless you are very close. And it was the cool, neon green Mexican thread I bought from a well-known quilt instructor that was the problem, not my machine. I will use it only in hand-sewing from now on. And the piece looks great in my studio/former bedroom's black & white bathroom. Happy Daz! I'm trying to post this early as a draft.
I do have a word for our next challenge - transformation.

Reincarnation

Sounds like we all have been having a couple of busy months.  I almost forgot about the challenge, and then, when it finally appeared on my radar, planned for a while to make a monochromatic quilt, but I got to thinking about the meaning of "green" as in "good for the earth." Instead of creating an image that symbolized this, I finally settled on actually being green and reusing fabric.

Years ago I had bought pieces of old Japanese kimonos, mostly sleeves, carefully unstitched them, and put them away--somewhere. After a frantic search, I was actually able to find these pieces.  I had forgotten that one of them contained carefully handpainted leaves that were on the lining of a sleeve, a bit of beauty that only the wearer would know about. That fabric was, by fortunate coincidence, green--a multi-shaded green with embedded dots that show up in certain lights and tiny light green dashes that must have been applied after the painted leaves (not much of this shows up in a photograph).

To keep with the green theme, I used no fusible interfacing with all its chemicals, my preferred method of dealing with silk, and did all the piecing and quilting by hand, although I did cheat and attach the facing by machine.  And here is the "Reincarnation" of those kimono silks:

And now that mine is finished and posted, I can enjoy what all the rest of you have created this time. Good theme word, Penny!

Madalene