Fabulous book,
hideous fabric
This is the "ugly fabric" that arrived in the mail this week from Karen Musgrave, kicking off her internet challenge.
The mission, for us fearless (foolish?) quilters who signed up, is to turn Karen's hideous, vintage fabric into fabulous art quilts using the techniques in Rayna Gillman's new book, "Create Your Own Free-form Quilts." (Click here for Rayna's comments on the ugly fabric.)
Rayna slices and dices ugly blocks and hideous fabric and combines them with other fabric until she has sizzling, fantastic art quilts. I just got her book this week and started practicing her techniques with my own fabric while I waited for Karen's to arrive.
Here are some of the scraps I started with, and below are my first few baby steps using Rayna's free-form, no-stress techniques.
Thankfully, Karen is allowing us to paint, dye or use other means of surface design to help in the transformation.
Stay tuned
6 comments:
I cannot wait to see what you do! Thanks so much for joining in on what I hope will be fun. (I'm thinking I must have been nuts too! Hugs, Karen
I have done this and made some great backgrounds for collage. I quilted some first and painted them and used stamps and paper. Such a good way to use up that ugly fabric.
Call me a contrarian, but I never met a free-form no-stress method that did not stress me out. Admittedly, I am a very uptight creative person but am loosening up some. One place I have always found no stress in free-form is in handwork like quilting or beading. But for some reason, I can't translate that feeling with rotary cutter in hand. You, however, I think will do great. You already seem to design in a free-form manner.
Interesting choice for ugly fabric - it definitely does not look like it belongs in anything artsy.
Well now here's the thing - beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just KNOW you'll work wonders with that "ugly" fabric. (Which, by the way, I don't think is so bad - dated, yes, but not so bad...)
Go for it!! Can't wait to see the progression to the end.
I do this technique as well, only I didn't know there was a name so I just call it: crazy scrappy quilting!! It's sort of like using my scraps to "make" fabric, then I trim to square off, then quilt and embellish! I have never quilted successfully in the traditional way because I either count wrong, or cut wrong or my corners don't meet...it's always something!!!! Can't wait to see more, your creations always thrill me!
AAARRGGGH - I'm joining you in this challenge and it's a hum-dinger. I can't quite face it yet - LOL.
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