The Apple Quilt is Almost Done

It's getting there. I am deciding what if anything I will add to the top right corner; nothing complicated, but something I think to break up the space. The blue print is from a SAQA swap we had at a recent meeting. Is it rust dyed with indigo batik on top? It is a heavier fabric with a damask texture. The floral check is a vintage fabric from my grandma. It was fun to combine different styles of fabrics for this quilt. This is a little larger than what I've been making lately. This will finish about 20 x 16. I will be quilting it tomorrow.

A Fabric Apple

Another apple was sacrificed this morning today to use for a model, and the large apple that will be in the foreground has been started using my brightest reds. I have fused Wonder Under to the batting, and may use my mini-iron to fuse-baste the larger pieces down before I can tuck background pieces in around it.

My husband says I should do something more interesting than an apple quilt, which gave me doubts even before I started this quilt. I think how you approach a subject can be more important than the subject itself. This apple is looking yummier than the real thing. I think I’ll keep going.

A Still Life for the Next Quilt

For this Fast Friday’s Challenge we are supposed to do a quilt based on the design concepts of scale & proportion. We have a week to make a small quilt. That leaves me four days since I am starting late (which is normal). Nothing like a deadline and a bit of accountability to get a quilt done. I put together this still life to work from this evening. I will work loosely from the photo.

"Withered Rose" is complete

I have completed my "Withered Rose" quilt. It originally had beads in the center (I showed pictures a couple of blog entries ago). I like it much better with the french knots.

A Coordinated Business Card

I designed a business card a couple days ago to coordinate with my blog header using the WordArt tool in Microsoft Word. Half the morning was spent getting a good close-up with enough pixels to be professionally printed. The rest of the morning was spent trying to figure out how convert it all into a JPG file. The printed card will have my phone number and email address under my blog address.

The photo I used is a close-up of the large blue-green teapot from this quilt which I started in a Robbi Joy Eklow class a couple of years ago. It is made from my own pattern which I designed before class.

Embroidering after I have un-beaded my latest quilt

I began this quilt as a challenge for last months Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. The full view of the almost done quilt is show on the Fast Friday Challenge blog. The guidelines for this challenge were to depict motion in a quilt, and use embellishment. I turned to my garden month to see what I could do with a withered rose.

Embellishment isn’t something that comes naturally for me. I admire some beaded quilts. If done well they can be effectively integrated into a composition. But what I have done here seems to be added on. The shininess of the beads is competing for attention with the rest of the quilt. Perhaps I could have made beads work for the center of the flower if the rest of the quilt had embellishment also.

So I have removed the beads and have started replacing them with French knots. The embroidery seems to add the necessary detail without being distracting.

Welcome to my new blog

I have finally decided to take the plunge and create a blog. After Thanksgiving, when I have a bit more time, I will start adding some real content. But I have been thinking about doing this for a while, and thought that there’s no time like the present to get my feet wet.

I’ve tried keeping a paper sketchbook, but haven’t been faithful to it, and can never find it when I want to use it. Sketches and ideas always end up on scraps of paper. So a little more than a year ago, I started keeping a kind of private offline blog just for myself in Microsoft Word. It has been a great place to gather thoughts, quilt ideas, sketches, and finished quilts. Now I will be able to share these same things.

I will keep my posts art and quilt related with lots of pictures. My posts are likely come in spurts like my quilts do. I will post when I have something interesting to share and when I have time.

In the meantime, if you want to see some of my latest quilts you can visit a shared blog for the “Fast Friday Fabric Challenge” group that I belong to: http://fastfridayquilts.blogspot.com/search/label/Linda%20Cline