Detail from "Rain Dance," an original quilt by Sherrie Spangler

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Sewing in fits and starts


I've been having trouble focusing on art quilting since the move and the two-week vacation on the road, but today I finally focused in on starting a "quilt" for our upcoming STITCH show. I'm calling it "Chocolate and Oranges" and it's made from ...


... orange bags and Hershey Kisses wrappers. I've been collecting them for years.


I ironed the plastic labels between parchment paper to flatten them and it worked pretty well. The base fabric is silk organza and I might put tulle on top, but not sure yet.


Before the trip, I started this prism quilt from the pattern that was on the bag of a package of coordinated strips. It was fun (mindless) sewing the long strips and then cutting the triangles, but I don't like the precision sewing required from this point on. This project may go into the UFO pile.



Then there are all the photos I took on the drive across Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin! It was overload of color, pattern and texture that has my mind swimming with quilt ideas.


 

The greens and bright blue skies that we passed for thousands of miles had me thinking of painting silk organza and building up layers of luminescent color.



The hot spring pools at Yellowstone provided great natural colors and patterns for inspiration.


And fields of flowers never fail to inspire me to think about abstract swathes of color in cloth. All of this is making my sewing come in fits and starts while my mind jumps from idea to idea!



 Have a colorful day
 

3 comments:

Judy Sall Fiber Art said...

Aah! The beginnings of inspiration... looks like lots of ideas are fermenting there! I thought of you on Monday when my friend Joyce and I visited some quilt shops in Prescott Valley, Cottonwood and Sedona. When I looked at your strip project above, I thought about Rayna Gillman's slice and dice strip quilting... always a way to use UFO's! And I can't wait to see more about your wrapper quilt... fun!

Robbie said...

When you get back at it you do!! Candy wrappers are fun to work with...good luck!!! Perhaps the strip piece you've done can be used with the chocolate quilt!!

Judy Ferguson said...

I have been on project overload for a while, but I think that you should do something with the buffalo pictures. You could make them all different colors. lol