Judebug

Ann - I checked out your website and blog. Nice! Inspirational! Creative! Thanks for your input here as well. I'm so happy to see this thread growing with interest and participation. We have a lot to share with one another.

Judebug

Congratulations Suzie! You qualify for determining what our May Quilt Challenge theme will be. Please be thinking about it and don't reveal until the last day of April.

The Geometry Quilt: Alicia Merritt's technique for design reconstruction sounds interesting and I personally like the resulting photo of your piece. It appears balanced, good contrast, nice texture and causes the eye to linger and explore. If the overstuffed areas that puckered bother you, stuffing more will help or, you can add enough embellishments like beads or hand stitching (anchoring all three layers) to create further dimension and reduce or even out the puckers. I'm not sure why it won't lie flat without seeing it in person? You could adhere this quilt to a separate background quilt, to make the top quilt lay flat.

Black/White & Color (Red) Quilt: A dramatic look regardless what color you choose to play with Black and White. The Red reminds me of fire, passion, emotional, confident, excitement. My monitor isn't showing the quilting well enough to comment. It looks like you may have purposely shaped your piece irregularly which certainly accents your inner fabric lines. The skewed appearance correlates well together.

These are both exciting pieces to enjoy. Thank you for sharing and don't forget to be thinking about May's Quilt Challenge theme for us.

suziehammond

I am going to love choosing the next theme. Any input welcome.........

And I am dying to see what all you guys are up to. Hope lots of photos of your experiments go up soon. Remember that every new piece will probably be a series of experiments and most will have elements of 'failure', but sometimes they can wind up a delight. (Many times not. Let's make this a nice safe interesting space to try new things)

Making these Q's is so much fun! It is helping me to ensure I discipline myself to get more done and use my brain. Since I am down in South America (Chile) I have VERY limited fabric choices. I am buying and cutting up cotton/poly tablecloths, old shirts on the second hand clothes tables and using bits of my stash......quite a set of challenges. Hoping to discover more and more blogs and videos with techniques to try.

suziehammond

I am going to love choosing the next theme. Any input welcome.........

And I am dying to see what all you guys are up to. Hope lots of photos of your experiments go up soon. Remember that every new piece will probably be a series of experiments and most will have elements of 'failure', but sometimes they can wind up a delight. (Many times not. Let's make this a nice safe interesting space to try new things)

Making these Q's is so much fun! It is helping me to ensure I discipline myself to get more done and use my brain. Since I am down in South America (Chile) I have VERY limited fabric choices. I am buying and cutting up cotton/poly tablecloths, old shirts on the second hand clothes tables and using bits of my stash......quite a set of challenges. Hoping to discover more and more blogs and videos with techniques to try.

janeknapp

You probably know about Quilting Arts magazine and the website, http://www.quiltingdaily.com/. I love this magazine and the daily/weekly newsletter. There are so many free e-books, blogs, forums, resources, store, gallery, etc. which allow the creative juices to flow. I want to do it all, but I am still wetting my feet. The art quilt small group from my guild met for a year studying Lyric Kinard's book, Art + Quilt. We did her exercises (journal quilt size) every month based on elements of design and color. It helped me tremendously. I've used Setacolor transparent paints to prepare fabric and have used Derwent Inktense pencils to add permanent color to designs, but I've only scratched the surface. I tried a "silk screening" technique using organza and a Pellon iron-on vinyl. I recently purchased a gel pad for monoprinting, Magic Stamp moldable foam for stamping, ExtraOrganza inkjet printer sheets, Transfer Artist Paper, and Mistyfuse (sheer fusible). I haven't used them yet. There are so many techniques out there that look interesting.

suziehammond

I drool over all your materials and tools to get things done..... you lucky duck! Try them all.

I love QA mag. They have so many cool helps and tutorials. And all the you-tubes under art quilts. There are some good ones there and they've introduced my to some new books I need to pick up when next friends go to the US and are willing to act a pack mules for us.

Looking forward to seeing what people explore and find really useful on their projects.

Judebug

Here's my first April challenge piece I just finished today called "Not So Mellow Yellow". It is a 12" square. I created the original design using graph paper and repeated the four blocks to make a whole. I had so much fun rearranging the design, coloring and experimenting with texture doodles before I ever got to the fabric. I spent 3 long days designing patterns for this April theme and hope I have enough time in April to do them all!

quiltgal

My avatar is an art quilt. About 1/2 or slightly more of my quilts are art quilts. Those quilts are more like playing and less like work.

Grandma58

All the new pieces added are incredible!

earthwalker

Beautiful Judebug....and so are all the others..I love your cat piece quiltgal. I am still stuck in March's Geometry...have finally finished my sketches and am busy sourcing my fabrics.