Color

I'm participating in the

31 Day Blog Writing Challenge

and

the prompt for yesterday and today are about color.

One of my favorite subjects!

Let Your Passion Shine is a throwback from almost 7 years ago.

On days there hasn't been a sewing project to blog about,

 I've been using

Cheryl's prompts to keep up with the challenge.

Yesterday's prompt was 

Favorite Color

and today,

Least Favorite Color.

Color me RAINBOW!!!

But maybe you already knew that.

I linked the original posts to the pictures above if you would like to know more about the stories.

Yep, I love a lot of colors but especially love them all together.

There are lots of rainbow quilts around here.

This one hasn't made it home from The International Quilt Festival yet.

My least favorite color?

BROWN.

But footballs are brown and I live in the Sticks which is kind of brown.

I guess it works with some quilts but I won't go out of my way to make something in brown.

What's your favorite color?  Do you have a color you don't especially like?
Tell me about it.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Seasons of Love

It's time for the 

Blogger’s Quilt Festival :: Fall 2016 Edition

I want to thank Amy over at Amy's Creative Side for hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  I have found some great ideas and wonderful works of art.  I am inspired! 

It was a toss up where to enter this quilt, Seasons of Love, but I decided on the small quilt category even though this is my original design.

I made this quilt for Project Quilting.

Kim at Persimon Dreams hosts Project Quilting and announces a challenge.   

You then have one week to create something quilty.

This was the second challenge of six for Season 7 of Project Quilting and the challege was seasons.

If you've seen the musical (or movie), Rent, it's easy to recognize my inspiration for this quilt.

  "Seasons of Love" is a song from the Tony award winning musical written by Jonathan Larson.

I've been watching my friend Vickie over at More Stars in Comanche make the most beautiful collage quilts and decided to try my own version of one. 

I would say the above picture pretty much tells the story of how I put it all together.

And a rough draft of the words going around the heart.

That's 525,600 minutes.  The total minutes in a year.  The colors represent the seasons and the ups and downs of love. 

 I could go deeper here, but I'm sure you get the drift....

After everything was fused down I did as quilters say, "I quilted the crap out of it" 
or 
"matchstick quilted." 
That will hold all those free edges down.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 38" x 38" wall hanging

Special techniques used : collage quilting and applique

Quilted by : Me :)  matchstick on my domestic

Voting is September 25th - 30th.

You can see all the small quilts by clicking HERE.

Thanks for visiting

Tropical Sunset for Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2014

Welcome to my entry into the

Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Made with the Kona Sunset fabric palette

I call this quilt

Tropical Sunset

This year, Kona Cotton Solid fabric  by Robert Kaufman is celebrating 30 years

and have now reached 303 hues of solid colors.

I tend to use a little Kona in most of my quilts.

This quilt was made for the 

Wake Up to Kona Blog Hop

in January.

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of Amanda Murphy's book

Color Essentials

which is full of information in color study and has great projects using Kona palettes.

The pattern is from this book and is called Color Burst.

I used Black Kona as the background.

In her book, Amanda Murphy talks about using "Poison Colors" - colors directly opposite on the color wheel to add interest and movement to a design.  I decided to take that advice and use orange as the binding color. 

The orange really fits with a sunset and added a little pop.

I quilted the main part with free motion flowers using Aurifil thread and wavy lines on the water (teal) part.

Amanda has an excellent tutorial for continuous bias binding on her blog. 

This was my first  bias binding, by the way.  Love.

A view of the back.

According to the calculations

C

=

2

π

r

(Circumference of a circle)

Tropical Sunset is in the small quilt category.

With a radius of 36"

this quilt is approximately 226" around, not counting all the bumps and indentations.

So here are the details:

Quilt size:  70" across 

 see above calculations :) 

Fabric:  Kona solids in Sunset palette

Quilting:  by me on my Janome domestic

Thank you, Amy of Amy's Creative Side
for this opportunity.

Be sure to visit Amy's blog and see all the quilty inspiration!

If you are looking for my post in the

Black Cat Crossing Blog Hop

it is HERE.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - You Can Can Can

I want to thank Amy over at

 Amy's Creative Side 

for hosting the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  There is so much inspiration to see.

My entry is "You Can Can Can"

I first blogged about this quilt HERE.

Created for the "Think Ruffles" Blog Hop.

I live in Dodge City, Kansas and when I think of ruffles I think of dresses with lots of them.

Can-Can Dancers!

This picture was taken in front of Boot Hill and the Long Branch Saloon

where, every night during the summer you can watch real, live Can-Can dancers perform.

I machine stitched the hair and faces with 2 strands of thread.

Of course every hair do is a different color.

(I'm a hair stylist)  :)

The dresses are yards and yards of ribbon.
Satin and organza ribbon.

Between 5 1/2 - 7 yards per dress depending on the size of the ribbon.
 ( I was shocked when I kept track.)

Some of the dresses have organza ruffles inside, but I learned the hard way that it melts.  lol

So the right side of the skirts (the part under the fused leg ) is satin ribbon. Satin ribbon doesn't melt.  *winking big*

The garters are just a wee bit of satin ribbon.

I used this post card as inspiration.

I cut the edges of the quilt in a scallop using a technical technique - a soup bowl and tracing around it.  :) 

Moda Basic Grey Little Black Dress 2 Timeless fabric was used for the

ruffle and the bias binding. 

Kona white was used as the background for the can-can dancers.

Blogger’s Quilt Festival Stats

Finished quilt measures : 33" x 33"

Pattern:  designed by me and a friend.  Drawing (template) on Craftsy.

Special techniques used : ruffled ribbon, applique, double thread stitching, scalloped edges,  free motion quilting on my domestic machine - feathers (my first time)

Quilted by : Me :)

Best Category : Original Design Quilts

We're having a heat wave,
A tropical heat wave,
The way that she moves
That thermometer proves
That she certainly can can-can.

Thanks for visiting!

Now get the heck out of Dodge and check out the other wonderful quilts at the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Peace and Harmony

Welcome to my post for Amy's Creative Side's Blogger's Quilt Festival!

 

 

 

  

I apologize to my faithful readers for the repeat of this quilt, but I really felt like sharing it in the festival.  I first blogged about Peace and Harmony here.

 

 

I've always been a fan of the artwork on the Grateful Dead albums and used that as my inspiration for this quilt. It's kind of tie dye meets pixels in batiks. I think of it as color harmony in a twist. 

 

This quilt was part of the "Twisting to the 60's with Batiks" blog hop.  I quilted thousands of peace signs with free motion quilting on my domestic machine.  Variegated cotton thread was used for the top and white polyester thread was on the back.  The back fabric was pieced with a peace sign fabric and white on white flowers.

 

Quilt back showing thread

 




Peace and Harmony with "Love, Peace, and Daisy Hill Forever" Jayhawk

I enjoyed designing and putting this quilt together, mostly because I'm a fan of bright colors.  It is a nice bed sized quilt and was worth every moment of creating.

 



 

Quilt Stats

 

Pattern: Peace and Harmony - Here for free

 

Size- 72" x 90"

 

Quilting- Free motion on my Janome 6600

 

Fabric - Batiks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for visiting my entry, 



Just as I PICTURED it.

From the beginning of putting this quilt together, I had in my minds eye how I wanted to capture it in a photo.  Because we live on Duck Creek, putting the cabin in the background with the quilt back lit was exactly what was in my head and the day the photo was taken the sun helped to give the iridescence.

I'm entering this photo in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival :Quilt Photographer category.  I'm not a professional (for sure) but if you blog about quilting, photography has to be important.  I have a lot to learn, but I really enjoy having my idea come to life in a photo.
 
Quilt Stats:

Quilt Measurements  49" x 49"

Hand embroidery, Scrappy Binding

Quilted by me, free motion on my domestic machine

Duck Pillow Stats:

Quilt Measurements 24" x 24"

Reverse Applique

Quilted by me, free motion on my domestic machine

Duck and Ducklings Pillow Stats:

Quilt Measurements 14" x 14"

Quilted by me, free motion on my domestic machine

Sharing a friend's photos seems appropriate in this post.  I will never be as talented as my grade school class mate, Cate.  She has made quite a business with photography, but I can learn from her and use her as an inspiration. Just seeing a professionals work can inspire.  These tornadoes didn't cause damage and the wedding guests kept an eye on the storm as the wedding continued.  Here is a photo she took last year which you have probably seen before:

Photo by Cate Eighmey courtesy of AP

 

Isn't that picture incredible.  It went viral before she put her water mark on it.  Here is another from the same wedding:

Photo by Cate Eighmey courtesy of AP

Tornadoes in the background.  You can't always have perfect timing, but it sure helped Cate's business and she captured the celebration of the wedding perfectly.  The article about the wedding is HERE.

Capturing emotion in photos is one great skill.  In quilt photos, I like to make the viewer want to crawl into the picture and curl up in the quilt.  I'm working on it.  I think I'll always be working on it.


I originally added "Welcome to Duck Creek" to the photo.  Here is that one:

 

Another favorite was an inside shot:

 

 



My devoted readers are seeing this quilt and pillows for the second time in a week.  The Blogger's Quilt Festival requires it's own post, so I hope you understand.  I first blogged about this quilt HERE.

Be sure and go to the Festival.  Entries are still being accepted in all kinds of categories.  It's so fun to look at the beautiful quilts and see what ideas others have.  Amy works very hard and it's a very organized event.  There are great prizes from fantastic sponsors.

 



This year, Amy is allowing 2 entries.  I may bring another quilt back....

Have a great week,