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Friday, September 14, 2012

Banishing the Design Doldrums

I'm having a struggle.  I agreed to enter the SAQA Regional exhibition, "The View from Here."  The problem is, I was so busy before I left, I only had ideas in my head.. I dutifully printed some photos of shots I had taken to give me inspiration and guides for making the pieces, and thought since I am going to be spending 12 hours in a car, 8 hours on an airplane, and while visiting Montana, there is no television so in the evenings I thought I could stitch.

However, I forgot the photos and don't like the sketches I have done for the concepts.  So...what to do.  Well, since I'm in Montana farm country, the land of rusty bits, I decided I would rust dye some fabric for the ground for one of the ideas I had.

So, here's what those wierd little packages yeilded.  Some possibilities....I think I'm going to add some tea to a couple of pieces to see if that makes a better ground for what I'm thinking of.  I also painted some sky fabric.

And...I made a little piece for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge.  I'm late on that too...no surprise, but I expect to finish this for tomorrow.  I was going to do a school of fish based on a sketch I did for Elizabeth Barton's Quilt University class, "Inspired to Design." But, since Ann Ruthsdottir already showed her piece based on the school of fish, I decided to do something else.

 So...here's my "Leap of Leaping Leopards." I Mistyfused the pieces down, and tomorrow I will quilt it. The background it is sitting on a just a piece of rust dyed fabric....mom had a red table cloth on and getting a background was hard...so just look at the stuff on the blue.

 I wasn't sure if I wanted to put a pale moon in the upper corner or not. My mom is not a person inclined to use yellow, so the only thing I could find to audition the color was a piece of yellow paper.  I'm thinking the edges should be not as sharp, and the color paler.

What do you think?

I think sometimes diving in helps break the design block... at least I'm hoping it does as I really have to get these fingers flying.
I'm participating with Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday art quilting blog.  You can find it here.  You can find links to other art quilting blogs on her site.

7 comments:

Deborah OHare said...

Leaping Leopards! I love that. Wish I had thought of it:)

Del said...

Yes, lighter and hazier would work.Great picture of the fabric on the wire fence.

Nina Marie said...

ohh I'm just finishing Elizabeth's class at QU - gotta start my piece now. I took it in person too - 5 yrs ago so its been nice taking it online with a girlfriend.

Leaping leopards is something that you could really play with! What a great idea!

So glad you linked up!!

Pam Geisel - For Quilts Sake said...

Love the leopards and I do like the moon. I wonder if you could make a few blue/bluish-white shapes similar to what the leopards are jumping over to put over the moon as if clouds were passing over it.

Also, the photo of the rust dyed fabric drying on the clothesline could make an interesting "View From Here" quilt.

Will miss seeing you at today's MVAQN meeting!

Sylvia said...

We live in farm country as well. I need to do more rust dyeing. I loved seeing the progression of the project, thanks for sharing.

Rayna said...

Frankly, if you used the same rusted fabric for the foliage in the piece, I'd leave it on that background.
Makes it more interesting and shows up just fine.

Katherine McNeese said...

you could use the rust dyed fabric for the moon...