Leaving my comfort zone

"Winter Closing In," by Sherrie Spangler

I just finished this quilt in response to an art show challenge:

"Outside Your Comfort Zone."

My comfort zone is bright, cheerful, colors that remind me of a sunny summer day or the clear desert skies. My discomfort zone is gray, black and anything else that reminds me of a dark, rainy day.

These are some shots of Tacoma and Gig Harbor in the winter. NOT inspiring for me. In fact, I normally can't bear the thought of working in grays and black, unless I use them to accentuate bright colors.

That's not the sun. It's a window reflection.

So I decided to dive into my scraps and pull out dark colors.

I played around with them, arranging them on a black fleecy piece of fabric instead of batting. They stuck nicely to it, which made the quilting easy. The arrangement is how I feel much of the winter when the days here are so dark and rainy. I'm trying to not let it bother me so much, but it's a challenge.

Since there were so many little loose pieces, I covered the whole thing with Sulky Solvy and basted it with safety pins, then took it to the machine and did vertical black lines of quilting. I've had trouble in the past with the Solvy sticking to the foot, but since we've been having dry weather that wasn't a problem. (See how to cope with sticky Solvy in my post here: http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/10/blow-drying-solvy.html)

Normally, you would dissolve the Sulky Solvy by immersing the piece in water. I like to tear it off in strips as I go because it's so exciting to see the colors revealed. Cheap thrills! If you've ever had a snake as a pet, it's like watching the snake shed its papery whitish old skin and revealing shiny bright new colors.

I've torn off the Solvy from the right side after quilting.

Here's how I justified using shots of orange and green in my winter quilt. This is by my house:

And there you have it! A quilt that's definitely outside my comfort zone.

Have a more colorful day