We were discussing design books on a list in which I participate. I reviewed, sort of, Johannes Itten’s book, Elements of Color, some time ago. I wanted to mention Sarah Ann Smith’s posts about Steven Aimone’s book Design!: A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists & Craftspeople.
Month: April 2007
Design Ideas for Coffee Quilt
After writing the post about the Coffee quilt, it occurred to me that a row quilt might be the way to go.
When my computer is idle, it scrolls through various quilt show photos I have taken. While it was scrolling through the PIQF 2005 photos, I saw a row quilt that might work for the coffee quilt.
This one is done with 4Patches, which wouldn’t really work, but I could fussy cut the squares with motifs in them instead of making a four patch. I could also make the squares different sizes to accomodate the motifs. Sue Nickels has a row quilt that I liked. I am pretty sure I took a picture of it when I was in her class and will have to dig that out.
I am not starting this quilt, just mulling.
Coffee Quilt
Luana has some new coffee fabrics, which got me to thinking about the coffee fabrics I have been collecting.
I have quite a lot of coffee fabrics, which I was collecting about 4 years ago for some unnamed/undesigned/unstarted project. At some point I realized that many of them were brown and I didn’t like brown. Now that turquoise and brown are popular and look good together, I think I can use turquoise with them to make the brown more cheerful.
Still, I do like the fabrics and would like to think of something nice to do with them. St. JCN and I did “She Had to Have Her Latte.” The Tarts Come to Tea is supposed to be a coffee quilt. However, the name is much better than the Crabs Come to Coffee or something, so I guess it will secretly be about coffee.
I don’t want to do something like attic windows just to showcase the fabrics. I want to do something creative and original. Perhaps a “She Had to Have Her Second Latte”?
I also have some great Dutch coffee fabrics that I bought at Black Cat Quilts. They are pretty special and I would like to do something special with them. Some kind of breakfast quilt? I am not sure. I suppose they have to go to the cogitation pile.
Inspiration in Niles
This tree is on Alvarado-Niles Blvd in the Niles district of Fremont, cross street is Hillview.
Relief (Sharon’s Quilt)
Finally, I feel some relief. I have finished the top and back to Sharon’s quilt and it is ready to go to the quilter. As I mentioned, I didn’t feel a sense of euphoria or relief after finishing the Nosegay, but I do feel some of that relief now.
Top: with the border on, it is a little too big for my design wall (what else is new with my work these days?)
Detail of front: this is the label. There was one last pink bordered square that I needed to make the piece complete, so I turned it into a label/wish for happiness for the happy couple.
Back
Detail of back. The pink is a map of Paris and the white and black border has French words on it.
Blurry detail of a batik fabric that I used for the border, then decided I really liked. If you have any, I want more. 😉
I looked at my UFO list and it looks like most of the large outstanding projects are out of the way, except the Spiderweb, which is probably next on the list. There are a number of smaller projects, which are more arty that I will have to get back to eventually.
At the moment, the design wall is blessedly empty. Now I feel like I have some brain space and can work on something I don’t feel is hanging over my head. I guess I need to try to finish projects before they get so old that they start shouting at me. I will put the pineapple blocks and the Cross Blocks back up and see what happens with a new project.
Slight Deviation from the Quiltmaking Norm
I spent the day at my friend’s, Single Scrapbooker*, house working on my photo albums. I have been reading scrapbook magazines to get ideas for color schemes for my quilts. Most of the layouts are too complicated for me. I need to get the photos in the albums fast. However, I have been inspired by the layering and detail work. You can replicate some of the ideas in quiltimaking by getting inspiration from the colors, using beads and machine applique’ (or any kind of applique’, I suppose).
I tried creating a page yesterday based on some of the ideas I was seeing. It doesn’t have flair that layouts in the articles have. Still, I like the layout and am pleased with the way it turned out.
*SS has not updated her blog in awhile, but said she got a lot of great ideas yesterday, so I hope she does. She is a good writer and very thorough in her analysis .