Wednesday 10 February 2016

Wind, snow, sun FEBRUARY

Mother Nature was kind to us, two days of spring like weather replaced with wind and snow.  That makes it good quilting weather when I have finally blown the drive clear.  Since I cannot see the drive it is easy to put it out of my mind and I would rather be quilting, of course so I did until I needed to be mobile.

This snow makes it understandable why Valentines and all the flowers and the red colours are so popular.  It helps to get over the hump of winter and into thinking March is only one month away from spring.  So I made myself a valentine.  I combined an original embroidery design of hearts with the white snow of fabric and here is what resulted. The batting is doubled and it really makes a design reach out.  Of course to get the full impact you do have to do intense quilting around a design to really make it raised.  Here is the walling hanging on the frame and finished with a very tiny dark flange.  I am liking flanges more and more as they add a detail that helps to contain the actual quilting.  I also like the background which is wavy lines in a cross hatch pattern.  It give a lovely movement to the quilt.  When you do some random scribbling in some of the intersections it gives even more definition.  I used an offwhite thread on the white and this prevented the piece from looking washed out with just the white and red.

I also finished a larger quilt which I hated throughout the whole process.  I took a pattern from a book, changed the colours which were quite muted and contrasted with white and then I used bright colours with a darker contrast in a shot cotton and turned the blocks on point.  The body of the quilt has been on a design wall taunting me with how to finish it.  Well here is the finished product.  It has kind of grown on me.  Two of the blocks had white backgrounds and they really flaunted them selves beside the others.  So I painted the white backgrounds with water colour pencils and they blend much better.  
Like so many quilts, there is always a learning.
I also executed Plan B on my Christmas tree.  I snipped off the lights and put large Swaroski crystals in place.  Experimentation is a challenge but trying an idea is fun and having a back out plan is a good idea.  I hate to just pack it away and so must find some room for it.  At this rate there will hardly be wall space in my quilting room and I will have to shift paintings elsewhere to make room for quilts.  


There is still lots of February to quilt so enjoy and thanks for reading my post.









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