Best Use of Color: Contemporary Traditional

Maybe there is a term for this kind of quilt that I don't know. Is it a modern traditional or a contemporary traditional? I would not consider it an "art quilt" but it not a piece that is reproducing an old look. To me it is an artful contemporary traditional quilt. It uses traditional techniques and includes at least some traditional pattern but the fabrics included are very today and techniques are mixed as is the design. It fills up its design space/plane with a kind of balance that I would define as art influenced rather than folk influenced? This may not make much sense and I'm also sorry I couldn't get a full photo!

The artist is Susan Schweikhart

Spiral

Pieced spirals are always amazing. I heard others saying the same as I took these pictures.

More Sunflowers

I loved the texture on this smallish quilt. The artist is Laura Kardos and she needle punched the center and embroidered around the leaves. The varying shades of green on the leaves really add to the sense of texture also. Great detail.

Quilters seem to like sunflowers...

Best Use of Embellishment and More Petaled Flower Shapes

The piece is couched with fibers around the center circle and beaded in the circle. I really love the skewed square shaped in the background and like Anna Faustino, the artist, sunflowers are a favorite of mine.

Here They Come: The Quilt Fest of New Jersey IV, 2008

This is the grand prize winner. Most shows seem, to my own admitedly unique perspective, to have themes and this one started here with the daisy/petaled flower image. The sunburst shape is one of my favorites so I was happy!

The center is ruched (sparkle organdy?) and embellished with what look like gold beads.
The quilt is called "Susan" created by B. J. Titus.

New York Beauty Flowers: Continued...

Progress on the paper pieced NY Beauty.   I did decide to make it narrower and since I took these pictures I've finished all of the piecing and sewed it all together.

I need to add two fairly narrow borders and all it will need is quilting! I think I will machine quilt it myself. I am a little nervous about doing that but I don't think hand quilting would work?

Valentine's Day Card

Made in part with my newest toy! Not a very good picture but my first card like this: segmented, folded and made of tags.

Water Color and Wrought Iron...

But not the usual 2 inch squares. I think this one is composed of pinked raw-edged rectangles overlapped and stitched down. The flowers are also pinked raw-edge applique that is actually cut in the shape of the illustrated object and not suggested by value shifts in the squares. It is quite effective. If anything the technique gives it a more "watery" look.

Triptych

I can't say now for sure but I think this was made from sheers with some metallic threads.

 Two things about it I love: the plaid look and the simple shape/treatment that because of the color and texture looks complex.

Seasonal Sky Quilt: Christmas

I have the idea to do a dark background quilt with white embroidery of stars and Christmas things but it is not coming together very well. I want to divide it into vertical panels and let light elements -- ribbon? fiber? sheer fabric? needle-felted fiber stripes? -- run down the vertical panels behind the embroidery like snow or Northern lights. I just found two quilts by Judith Trager that also have a seasonal theme and are using a vertical stripe. One is even winter-y. I like how she have handled the horizontal bands and made lots of surface activity.

Darker One for Mom

Someone at my Needle Felting class called me a scrapbooker and I guess I sort of am now.

More Pictures of the Albums:Brighter One for Sister

I particularly love photo number five . It is of my grandmother rowing across the Ohio River. It was taken by my great-aunt (one of my favorite people of all time) obviously sitting in the prow of the boat. I like to think of them, Ona rowing, Gladys looking through the view finder of her new camera: and now we see what she saw that day so long ago.

What I made for Christmas With My New Toy

I bought myself a Cricut Expression for Christmas and made albums for my mother and sister. It was a fun and a new sort of project for me. The darker one has "country-ish" imagery for my mother and the brighter included some commercially printed Asian-themed paper for my sister. I'll post more images separately.

I made the cords on the brighter one in a "Fairy Cords" class. The idea was to start with a one piece of cord and then, with a groved sewing machine foot, to bind other kinds of fiber to it with a zig-zag stitch. It was a fun, not very demanding, class.

Dimensional Pall

Another dimensional quilt. I'm looking forward to the 2008 New Jersey Quilt Fest. I want to get the PA Quilt Fest photos posted. Will the dimensional trend continue?

Quilts from Japan

One of my favorite features of the PA Quilt Extravaganza is the international quilts, especially the ones from Japan. This on had lots of surface texture; many of the elements were designed raised off of the flat plane of the quilt. It is hard to tell from the photo but the images arranged around center design of the quilt are on the insides of fabric-sculpted shells.

Loose, Limber and Abstract

This is on a fairly loosely-woven background fabric that might be linen. The purple dots are also linen-like. The prints are batiks and the quilt is really very simple. A panel of white, a panel of ombre, multi-sized dots and bubbles framed by funky tumbling squares all roped in with really loosely-twisted wool.

Organic and Fan Shapes

I like the fan shapes and the silhouette feel that the white leaf-shapes create against the darker background. The color palette is interesting. It is nearly neutral with greys and taupes, browns and dull greens. The dark golds and deep purpley blues snake their way up the quilt ending in an explosion of purple dots at the top right corner. Over all its organic and dynamic without
being really colorful. Within the borders are details that may be embossed velvet or velveteen, or even brocade. Triangular pieces wrapped through a covered ring, they look like tie-d0wns, made to be attached to something?

This is quilted by hand by the way, in a wonderful combination of detail-creating stitches, outline and background grid/cross-hatching.

Traditional and Not

Traditional block designs used in new ways. Is it a Carolina Lily living inside of a tumbling block patch? The lily blocks rise up like tall flowers in a garden border. Floating above them is an open, embroidered image of lilies.

This quilt is also using light effects and transparency. The artist choose to start with darker fabrics in the lower right corner moving the light lily "stems" across and up the quilt until they reach the open center where the blue sky takes over the composition. She uses the backs of her fabrics several times to enhance the feeling of light beaming out from amongst the flowers.