I previously wrote about a Hawaiian Cheater Quilt design that I did for a contest at Spoonflower. I ordered a yard of the fabric on which I included a large version of the design and three small versions (about 8 inches by 10 inches) in different colors. Here are the smaller versions.
Spoonflower, my favorite place for printing custom fabrics, has a fabric design contest each week. Sometimes I enter it since it’s a fun way to try out new designs and practice my design skills. This week’s contest is to create a small repeating design with the theme of Kites. I knew I’d love to experiment with some mo
re Notan-style designs for this contest.
I started with four simple kite drawings that I did in Illustrator. I wanted the shapes to be fairly simple with each main kite shape touching two edges of its square.
Here’s the first repeat, in blue and black. It was obvious that the tails of the kites needed more work. Continue reading
In this earlier post I showed how to create a tartan plaid pattern in Photoshop. That 
method simulates the weave characteristic of a real tartan plaid, with the distinct diagonal twill pattern, like the one shown here.
As an alternative, here’s a really quick way to create a seamless plaid in Photoshop Elements. Continue reading
The October challenge for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group is Notan. Here’s the challenge description: Notan is a Japanese concept that utilizes black and white to demonstrate the contrast of positive and negative space. Often done as pen-and-ink
drawings, Notan can easily be adapted to fabric with stunning results. This
technique can help us evaluate our own skills with balancing the
positive/negative space in our quilts.
Notan is traditionally done in ink on paper, but is now often do
ne as a cut paper collage using the “expansion of the square” technique. This star cutout is a simple example — a star shape is cut from the black square and then flipped outward and placed on the negative white space, creating a positive/negative mirror image.
In two earlier posts I talked about my process for creating a quilt design starting from a photo. In this post, I’ll go through the process of actually making the quilt based on the final design (shown here). 
With the strong circular element in the design, I knew it would be important for the grass shapes to line up exactly across the circle. Normally I prefer to make my quilts by piecing rather than some form of applique. I’ll often use Ruth McDowell’s piecing technique on a complex quilt. However, for this design, I thought that piecing would take forever and I wanted to complete the quilt fairly quickly since it was part of a class (“Inspired to Design” with Elizabeth Barton at Quilt University). Continue reading
As a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, it pains me to say this, but Congratulations to the St. Louis Cardinals on winning the World Series. Although the cardinal on my quilt looks a bit like the ones on the St. Louis uniforms, it was inspired by the cardinals that visit the bird feeder outside our kitchen window.
I made Winter Cardinal (9 inches by 12 inches) as a donation to the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative. Both of my parents suffered from Alzheimer’s, so supporting the search for a cure is very important to me. Continue reading
I recently joined an on-line quilt challenge group, Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.
“This group of fiber artists and art quilters will be issued one challenge per month, with one week to complete a small work. Challenges will attempt to stretch members in their skills and creativity, encourage thinking outside the box, will teach new techniques and concepts. Challenges will be hosted by a different member each month and will incorporate color and design concepts, techniques, surface design, embellishments, work within themes, and any other art quilt concepts a member can imagine. “
The first challenge I participated in was to select a color palette from a painting and then create a small quilt using that color palette. Continue reading
In my previous post, I walked through the initial design process I used to create the quilt Prairie Grasses. 
I started with this photo, drew sketches to simplify the design and started on looking at value studies.
My first two value studies, shown below, were of the original sketch. I liked each of these, but I thought it would be more interesting to combine them in some way.
I was happy to learn that my photo “The Fossil Hunter” will be part of the Eye of the Quilter exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in a few weeks.
The photo is of my nephew Mike which I took while we were on a fossil hunting expedition at an Illinois state park. Mike had a great time running around to find the biggest rocks he could carry. Even though we didn’t unearth any fossils, we had fun exploring and digging. Continue reading
I recently completed the class “Inspired to Design” with Elizabeth Barton through Quilt University. The class is about the process of creating art quilts, starting with an idea, working up sketches, using value studies, creating color schemes and finally constructing the quilt.
I really enjoyed the class and I completed a quilt based on one of the designs I worked on. In this post and the next two I’ll walk through my steps in creating this quilt. Continue reading
Color On Cloth 