Using Extra Blocks

I'm Working On It

These blocks were created as demonstration pieces as I taught this original sampler class. It took me over 20 years to use them in the following quilt.

Although it may not seam I am working on this now, deciding how to quilt it is one of the steps in creating a finished quilt. That is where I am on my journey right now

I'm Working On It

These blocks were created as demonstration pieces as I taught this original sampler class. It took me over 20 years to use them in the following quilt.

Although it may not seam I am working on this now, deciding how to quilt it is one of the steps in creating a finished quilt. That is where I am on my journey right now.

New Quilt In Progress-Getting Interesting

I added pieced sections on each side of what has already been done. These were created for a vest I taught called Museum Vest. It was an original design. I made one complete vest and realized I didn’t need to complete another one. The colors were perfect for this composition I am creating and they were the perfect length. I only had to trim 2 inches from the bottom of each of them.
This is a totally new way for me to work to create a composition using vertical components.
I think I know what will come next but you will have to wait to see if it works.
It can be a challenge trying to work with units/blocks leftover from previous projects but it also is gratifying to be able to use them and make something beautiful.

New Quilt in Progress–One Step At A Time

I hang this on my design wall and then decide what will my next step be.
Part of my vision for this is to use leftovers from the other two projects.

This is a group of some of the possibilities. I am hoping this will reduce my fabrics in this bin!

I added a deep plum strip to frame the blocks you saw yesterday.
I do have an idea what will come next and I hope it will work.
Stay tuned.

New Quilt In Progress

I normally wait until a quilt is finished to share it.
I have decided to try something different with this one. I think many of you will be interested in following how I make this. It also may give you an idea of how to use some of your orphan blocks.
I have a lot of orphan blocks and scraps that have been begging to be made into a quilt.

This is the beginning of the quilt. I had these 7 plus a few more blocks left as demonstration samples when I taught a sampler class with these blocks. The blocks are 9 inches finished size.
I am putting them together with leftovers from another project, scraps from both projects, new fabrics and who knows what else.
I hope you’ll follow my progress as I create this unique quilt.

A Colorful Productive Day

There is another view of a quilt I am working on.

You get to see part of the quilt that wasn’t talking to me and telling me what it wanted to be. It finally spoke loud and clear and the top is finished.
I now have 4 tops ready to layer and quilt. They are all new work made from the fabrics that hung on my wall for several weeks.
I also cut the batting so I’m ready to layer them tomorrow.
It’s a good feeling after being away from creating while I have been purging and organizing the studio and doing some home decorating. Yes, the purging and reorganizing is not finished, but if I don’t take a break and do some creating I lose track of the purpose of my studio.

To Me Creating Is As Necessary As Breathing

You may or may not know that I have been very busy purging and reorganizing my studio.
I am not done.
It is at a point where I was able to clear space and work with some of the fabrics that I hung on my design wall a few weeks ago.
I need to do some creating before I can get back to the purging/organizing.
I am sharing some teasers with you of the inspiration fabrics I am using.

I think the one that uses this fabric only needs two final seams.

I thought I was happy with the composition of the one that uses these fabrics, but as I see a photo of what I am considering I think it needs more thought.

This one just needs to be sewn together.

And one more that may just become a Chasing Rainbows quilt.
The fabrics I am featuring are either ice dyes or shibori hand dyes I have created.

Complex Shibori Dyes

As I was organizing and folding my dyed fabrics I pulled these out and hung them on my design wall.
I wanted to study them and look at each one of them to see if it told me what it wanted to be. I am still studying them but I do have some ideas.
These are special pieces I used unique techniques to create and I want to showcase the piece and enhance it as a finished work of art.

Contemplating How To Use These Fabrics

I have a lot of fabrics I have dyed.
I find one way I can think about possible uses is to just hang some on the design wall and leave them there so I can look at them and get ideas to use them.

I have already made a decision on what to do with one of these pieces and started on creating with it.
A few of them have gone back to the table with the other dyed fabrics.
One of them told me I should use it on another project I will be working on soon so it has also been taken off the wall.
I may be doing some very simple things with some of these. After creating for my shows recently, working on my Olympic quilts and finishing some works in progress it may be time to slow it down a little.
Another advantage of having them hung on the wall is I start to see possibilities for quilting designs.
It’s not a race, it’s the enjoyable process of creating.

When Is More Too Much?

I just found this picture of a quilt I showed you recently.

You’ve got to know when to hold em,
Know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away
and know when to run!

Yes, I needed to RUN away and delete the lower part of this piece I was working on.

So I just took my rotary cutter and made a large gestural cut to eliminate that lower part and I had a wonderful work of art.

Just because I had spent time adding that was NO REASON to keep it when it spoiled what I had created.
I still have the part I cut off and I tried to do something with it. I cut it into smaller pieces and so far it still failed!

Dye Dogs-No Rules- Hitting Them Out Of The Park

I have two special BFFs who love to work with fabrics and all that that entails as much as I do.
About a month ago after a chance remark by one of them I gave each one of them half of a Dye Dog.

Robbie took this picture of hers before she did anything to it. She said the colors weren’t true but you can see the pattern in it. Beth’s had a similar pattern but more subtle. I cut them both from one piece of fabric.

What a fantastic composition Beth did using her Dye Dog as the background. It is so lovely and tasteful.

This is a close-up of Beth’s piece. It you look closely you can see the rosy colored areas that were part of the manipulating when I dyed it.

This is Robbie’s Dye Dog. She loves handwork and comes up with so many unique ways to use it. The addition of the yellow really took this to a new level. If you look closely you also can see the original marks from how I manipulated this fabric.

It’s fun to see two totally different compositions which started with such similar pieces from one of my Dye Dogs. It is obvious they both put a lot of thought, design skills and construction details in their pieces.
I feel like a proud mother since they used my original Dye Dog fabric.

How I Came To The Point Of Creating My Ice Dyes-Rerun 2018

These are 3 of my experiments on the journey to create the BEST. I consider the above so-so but it takes a lot of these to achieve the best.
Thanks you to everyone for all your comments about my most recent piece which I consider the BEST of the best Florida Ice.
This never could have happened without a lifetime of learning involving fabrics and color.
Many have asked how I do this and it is not something I can share.
For one thing, the results are serendipitous.
And the other thing is unless you have lived the same life I have for 78 years you will never achieve these results.
I am no longer teaching, but am pursuing my own art.
To attempt to share this would not be fair to myself, nor to people who would try it and not get the results I do.
When I was doing one on one teaching for a fee I had a student ask if she could come and learn everything I knew about color from me in a one day session as she would have to travel a distance to get to my studio. It would not have been possible as she had not lived my life. I could have taught her about color theory but even if I did that until she did exercises,etc she still would not have learned what I attempted to teach her.
I can only suggest you take as many color and design classes as possible from the very best instructors and do the work from the classes.
Don’t concentrate only on working with dyes, but with paints, fabrics. yarns, food and papers.
Then play with your chosen materials until you get results that please you.
Devote every waking moment to your art as only then will you achieve your potential. You can multitask and think about your art being influenced as you live your daily life and think about what you want to do and how you will start.
You are all welcome to follow me on my BLOG and sign up to the email list on the page which will notify you each time I post to the blog.  In addition to my art I share parts of my life on my blog. There are times when a week or more may go by with no posts as I have nothing to post. The blog address is: http://quiltspluscolor.blogspot.com/
And in closing I am going to share some not so successful things I’ve dyed recently so you don’t thing I get a winner ever time.



The above are some less than lovelies but it takes creating a lot of these to find my direction to make the BEST!
Even the less than lovelies are useful for backs of quilts or they can be cut up and used in piecing. So all is not lost no matter what happens in my work.
And now 3 years after I originally wrote this post, some of these less than lovelies have been made into very successful pieces with some overdyeing or quilting!
I wish you success on your art journey wherever it takes you.

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again - Olympic GOLD

I have been doing some shibori dyeing recently.
Some of these pieces had been real duds and I could have been tempted to cut them up and use them as strips in simple quilts. I didn't give up and got some amazing pieces.
Some have 4-5 layers of pattern, both dye and paint.
I finished 18 pieces and there was only one dud and it will go into the pile to be dyed again for the 4th time.
I got one piece I consider spectacular. I must have started it 25-30 years ago. I believe this was the 4th layer of pattern.

This one earned a GOLD in my personal Olympic dyeing competition!
What will it become?

Inspirations For Creativity & Finding Your Ugly Fabric!

For me inspirations comes from the fabric and color.
I may have a very very vague idea of what I will create.
Once I start I let the fabric tell me what to do.
This is nothing new for me as I have worked this way since I started sewing clothing way back when. For clothing the hand of the fabric was another very important consideration.
At first my quilts were traditional designs but even then the fabric had to speak to me.
Currently the fabric has to carry on a conversation with the other ones in the project. This has been extremely evident in “And So It Begins” where I had a glimmer of an idea and spent a lot of time playing with the fabrics in my collection of hand dyed fabric, yet nothing gelled until I added a large piece of printed fabric.


I always told my students every quilt needs an ugly....in other words it has to be different enough to add interest to the work. This is my ugly in this quilt.

That was all it took and this ugly fabric was right at hand in my hand dyed options.
Of course this means I go through a lot of fabrics I own and take a lot out of their respective storage places.
The fact that I have a large collection of fabrics is very important to me as it gives me possibilities I could not have with a meager amount of fabrics.
Even the backing fabric has to past muster for me to use it. My recent quilts have facings and casings, rather than bindings, which mean I need a lot more of that backing fabric.
In the few instances where I am binding a quilt the binding fabric also is an important choice.
When I finish creating it means there are a lot of fabrics to put away that didn’t make the cut….unless they are in the running for the next one!

And So It Begins………..

Who says you can’t use artist hand dyed fabrics and printed fabrics together?

This is the very beginning of a new composition I am working on.
I have been auditioning fabrics for the last couple weeks finding combinations that played well together.
These made the cut and will be joined by others as it goes merrily on it’s way to completion.

Ice Dye Surprise Quilt

I have a feeling a lot of you were expecting a piece with a lot of bright colors. This was a new combination I tried.
These two parts were probably in the same batch.
It started with the center section. I dyed some pieces of fabric to go with it. They did not work at all.
Plan B! I had another piece with similar colors but it had a totally different manipulation. It took me several tries to come up with an idea that worked. It was a challenge to design especially with a very limited amount of the border fabric.
I'm not afraid to cut up a piece of my precious hand dyed fabric and try to make it work when I'm designing.
Once I came up with a rough idea I did a lot of figuring and trial and error to make it work and fit. 
I have to say I am very pleased with it.

Always remember, color gets all the credit, but value does all  the work.

MORE On Creating Original Work

One of the first things I find necessary is having a design wall.

It can be simple or it can be complex. I’ve done them all. It’s never too soon to start.

Although most of the pieces on my design wall here are finished work, I use this wall to do my designing and there is one WIP that you are not seeing on the far left end. I put things on the wall and then walk away and turn around quickly to see the total picture at that point. Often the work stays on the wall for a period of time so I can make the right decision.
You need to be able to look at your work from a distance…you say you can’t back up that far? Then get one of those peepholes that is for a door and look through it OR take pictures with your digital camera or phone. Let the work tell you what it needs.
Share your work with someone who is not a quilter/artist and ask their opinion. You will get some of the best comments that way.
Listen to everyone’s opinions and then do what you thing works best.
And most importantly : DO THE WORK
DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.
There is no substitute for practice, playing and studying.
When I look at some of my finished work I can see how I could have changed it, but done is done and it’s time to go on to the next one.
I’m created and finished the work and I have learned a lot and a lot about myself and what works and doesn’t work for me.
Don’t beat yourself up if you are disappointed with a project. Put it away for 6 months and when you take it out you will look at it with new eyes.

Am I Blue

As I went through some of my dyed fabrics deciding which ones needed to be over dyed these were some I will NOT over dye.
At this time they are hanging on a design wall so I can study them and hopefully come up with some ideas on how I want to finish them.

Words I Live By

This title may not sound very exciting.
Will you keep going and see what I have to say?
I am currently on a hiatus from Facebook. You may have asked me for how long? I do not know the answer.

The word is SIMPLIFY!
One reason to use a computer is to simplify our lives and make it easier. It is easy to fall down a rabbit hole and waste precious time. And when they work smoothly that is true. When they don't, not true!
Although this quilt may not look simple I used the fabric to it's advantage and created a shaded very complex looking quilt quite simply.

Then we also PROCRASTINATE
That is another way we can waste time.

I had to make a decision on what to do with these pieced diamonds and it only took me 18 years to decided this was the one!

 





Two positive words I live by are SERENDIPITY and INTUITION.
They both come from very similar parts of who I am.
I am not one to make long range plans and goals. I found it is too easy for me to get sidetracked if I do and never achieve them.
But if I let SERENDIPITY take over my life goes forward and many wonderful things happen.

I needed something to help deaden the sound in our sunroom. All of a sudden a bolt of lightning hit and I thought maybe this quilt I had made years before and had planned to display in a totally different way might work. I played with it on the tables in my studio to see if I could make it fit the space. It worked perfectly. It is a 2 sided quilt so I was able to loop it around the pole I used to display it.

INTUITION may send me on a journey that I have no idea about why I am heading in that direction, yet when I make that journey the result is often a great reward.

Lest you think my life is only about quilts, my family and friends are a most important part of my life. I had great friends from years ago when we lived in Ohio. We had lost touch with each other for over 40 years. I did remember they had moved to Ocala, Florida so I let my intuition and a little bit of detective skills go to work and I found them. This is the "My Florida Family" I mention often.

Not only did I find my friend Sally (on right) but with a little more detective work we found our other BFF from Ohio....Grace, who lives in Nebraska on the left. What a great feeling after we hadn't been together for 50 years and find it's still the great friendship it was many years ago.

There are some exciting new things that will be happening in my life that I will be sharing with you soon so stay tuned for some announcements when I am allowed to make them.

Yes, Something Is Going On!

This is just a teaser showing some of the Good Stuff as I sew things together.
I still haven’t chosen a direction where I am headed but that is par for the course.
Each and every composition is a new adventure for me.
If it weren’t then why would I do it?
I can think of so many ways I could go with this.
It is an exciting and fulfilling way to work.
When I began creating quilted/pieced things years ago I did start like this.
But somewhere along the line I chose to go off on the journey of traditional quilts.
I don’t regret that journey as it allowed me to learn more about color, design and technique.
It could be said I am back where I started but this time I have the confidence. design knowledge, color mastery and access to fabrics that were not even dreamt of over 40 years ago.