Sunday, April 1, 2012

March Color Challenge

Despite my very best efforts at procrastination, I did manage to complete a small project for this month's Color Palette Challenge. I loved the colors in the photo, but my thoughts early on in the month were trying to put too many pieces together so it took me forever to really dig in. I started with the beautiful logo from the National Museum of Iceland. My husband liked their logo so much that he saved a bag from our trip last fall; we're not in the bag-framing business, so I took it to a light table and traced out the pieces for an applique. I had a great piece of hand-painted fabric in just the right shades of taupe-y gray as the background, and a very dark almost-black for the applique itself. To bring in the fiery colors, I wanted to use a piece that I painted myself in a Sky Dyes class with Mickey Lawler several years ago. It had just the right volcanic look that worked in this palette, and that worked with the Iceland motif. In the end, though, I just used a tiny bit of the lava fabric as a two-sided border. Nothing fancy here, so the applique remains (off)center-stage.
March Color Palette Challenge: "Þjóðminjasafns Íslands" (12.5 x 12.75")
I did a simple echo quilting around the applique using a rayon thread variegated in shades of gray, and some free-motion flame quilting using a red/orange/gold/black variegated rayon in the lava border. There must be some Murphy's Law of variegated thread - everywhere I made a little goof, the color was very dark and visible at that exact point.

My husband has claimed this for his office (and, as I type this, I realize that he has now claimed both of my color challenge quilts - what the heck?!?).

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