penny-studionotes-2

I spent yesterday and today working on the back for the African fabrics quilt .  My goal was to use fabrics that didn't make it into the front of the quilt (although there a couple repeated from the front), to make an archive of the whole collection. I did my best to arrange the blocks in a way that worked, but I wasn't aiming here for a cohesive composition. With blocks this large, the only way to get that would entail being very deliberate about choice of fabric, and that's not what I was trying to accomplish here. My choice of fabric was limited, and I wanted to include at least one triangle of everything I had left.  I'm glad I was able to use a couple of fabrics in particular: 1) the "Africa" fabric that is the center block in the 2nd row (click on the image above to enlarge and you'll see the map of Africa in the middle); a different cut of the same fabric used in the bottom right corner, and 2) the peacock blue fabric with embroidery on it, center b...

I've completed the top made with African (and assorted other) fabrics; it measures about 50x70." It was challenging to arrange the blocks in such a way that both color and value were balanced over the quilt. I also didn't want any two triangles of the same fabric to be next to each other (unless it was in one of the 35 blocks with a diamond made up of 4 pieces of the same fabric). I ended up picking out of finished blocks a red fabric I had used that looked like rows of apples (below left). I liked having red as an accent, but I found my eye continually drawn to that fabric over others, I think because the pattern was too unlike the other fabrics (as well as being brighter). I think you'll see what I mean if you look at the earlier photo of blocks on the design wall, 2nd photo in this post . I cut back on the number of blocks with red, and I substituted another fabric that I thought fit better into the mix (below right). Looking at it again now, I think I should have l...

I only intended to make one quilt, happy to be taking a class with Bill Kerr and to be using African fabrics that I'd been given a while ago, as I've previously written up . But the construction of this quilt left me with a lot of half-square triangles, so I started playing with the print triangles.  In my earlier post about this, I forgot to mention that I was strongly influenced by a quilt made by Wanda Hanson, using all African fabrics cut in half-hexagon shapes. She first posted about this some weeks ago; here's a post with a photo of the finished quilt. I liked that Wanda put the fabrics right next to each other, no sashing or borders. I also thought that the combination of angled and straight edges added liveliness to the design--more so than simple squares or rectangles--and wondered how it might look using triangles. Well, now I had a chance to try out that idea!  I am still working on a final layout, but I've decided to go with the idea that Kathy Loomis sugg...

The layout-on the right is the one I've posted before, the one on the left is new. In the one on the left, I put four pieces of the same fabric next to each other to form a diamond. I like both layouts, and may make both. I'm thinking of starting with the one on the left (with still many more blocks to add and placements to adjust). If you have a preference for one or the other, I'd be happy to know!

I have the good fortune of having received a large supply of African and some South Asian fabrics from two different sets of friends, both of whom had collected fabric over years of travels; photos of the collections are here and here . Beyond making return gifts for these friends, I hadn't used the fabrics. But last week I took a great class on using large-scale fabric from Bill Kerr, of Modern Quilt Studio , and I brought along these fabrics as well as some large-scale domestic prints.  Most people in the class worked on a version of Modern Quilt Studios " Follow the Leader " pattern, but we were encouraged to work on whatever we liked, so I chose a pattern by Blair Stocker that I've had my eye on: "Leaving the Nest" by Blair Stocker, Wise Craft Quilts I reduced the size the the triangles from 12" (long bottom edge) to 9" and used a variety of solid colors for the background instead of all white. When choosing the solids for each block, I aimed ...

I had stamped several bowls on white linen instead of natural, and decided to make a few cards from them, no stitching added. These needed a black or gray background instead of cream. Then I did some improvisational work, using the scraps generated from trimming the abstract compositions shown in the last post . This piece is about 6x11 inches. I enjoyed working on this, playing around with what can be made from a variety of related shapes. The fact that the bowl shape includes both straight and curved lines makes for interest in the cropped forms. I think I will leave this as is, without trimming the edges further. I only have a few small scraps left. Not much variation of mark/texture in what's left, so I'll stop here.

I've continued to work with the bowls stamped on linen, using up all the imagges already stamped.  The photo above shows the first 3 stitched bowls in front, not mounted on cards. These are still my favorites, which I think I'll mount together in a frame. (Thanks to Beth for this suggestion.) Four more stitched bowls, mounted on cards, are along the right side.  The remaining 11 (center and left) are cropped pieces that I got out of the overlaid stamping below. I enjoy cropping to get new images. This one makes me thinks of two canoes tied up on the shore: And when I looked at the bowls upside down, I got this , one of my favorites: This one makes me think of a camping tent: But I like it better turned 90 degrees, for a still life of a wedge of cheese and a bottle of wine. Click on any image for a close-up view that allows you to see the complex texture in some of these. Here are a few photos to show how I make the crops. The first photo shows the cardstock window over the fab...