Color Journals: Purple for Ann Marie

Ann Marie likes purple, with accents of teal and turquoise; she wanted a page that conveyed something about the natural world or the idea of change. I started with a beautiful fabric with hints of metallic sheen, added a stylized silhouette applique, and finished with a little curved piecing in the lower section. Tight loopy quilting in the lighter fabrics made the bird shape stand out from the foam batting, almost a trapunto look. The words ahead of the bird's wings are the first line of Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird." I love her poetry, how she chose words that could transform the ugliest reality into beautiful possibility, and I thought they were appropriate for this lovely simple page.

Purple page for Ann Marie

Purple page for Ann Marie (reverse). For the first time ever, I planned the back too, so the outlined bird shape would appear to be dipping its wing into the orange sun rays.

First verse of Caged Bird

All caught up! I've already finished most of the work on the next page, blue and brown for Rose -- hint (but no spoilers!): my husband asked if we could keep this one...

Color Journals: Purple for Polly

On the first month of our color journal exchange, I made a purple page for Polly's fantastic journal. I loved the elongated shape that she chose. I used a simple Karen Eckmeier freeform technique to make a mountain landscape, accented with some free-motion quilting and a few aqua beads that looked like emeralds in the deep dark earth:

"Misty Mountains Rise" -- my boys gave me the name, which is apparently from a Hobbit song. SciFi geekery for the win!

Who'd'a thunk I'd have some purple and mint ice cream fabric? Perfect for the back!

The meeting last night was a delight -- I think everybody was so excited to share what they had made that we blew through all 13 projects in less than an hour! My next assignment is to make a "Travel"-themed page for Sue's gold-and-teal journal. So many ideas brewing for this one...

Mystery Geese

Back to Easy Street with Bonnie Hunter this weekend...this week's installation was to make 128 teeny flying geese, finishing at 1.5 x 3". That's a lot of little pieces to cut, even using Deb Tucker's Wing Clipper ruler.

I had to commit to one of the colors this time, so I chose dark, dusty brownish purples. For some reason, I have a lot of scrap chunks in this color. "Purple" is, in my opinion, a nearly meaningless descriptor; fabrics that are loosely defined as "purple" never seem to look good with other purples; red-violet and blue-violet are completely different beasts, and I wanted neither for this project. I made a few sample geese just to check the coordination, and the fabrics I had pulled out looked very nice with the light tan backgrounds.

The rows of teeny geese look fantastic all laid out next to each other.

These aren't trimmed down yet, but I wanted to take a few photos before the sun set so I could use natural light.

When I put a few of the four-patches next to the geese, it started to have kind of a warm, rich, wine-country feel:

In terms of color selection, I'm playing this project by ear (wait...my ear can't pick color...I'm not on some weird quilting acid trip). Let me try that again: I'm letting the process determine the colors, and at this point I have a Tuscan countryside color scheme in mind. I'm thinking the next (main) colors will have to be deep olivey green, and a very dark gold/rusty orange. I usually work in brighter, more vibrant color, but I'm already starting to fall in love with my mental vision of this emerging project.

Photo completely lifted from the website of Roberto Carli, a photographer I don''t know, but who takes amazingly beautiful pictures.

Purple Placemat

In honor of June's color -- purple -- I did manage to make a placemat-of-the-month. I realized that I have hardly any purple (relatively speaking) in pieces larger than scrap size...so no noodle quilt this month. I used the Accu-cut machine to cut these little triangles, then sewed them together without too much attention to matching points. A quick, thick meander this morning to quilt it up, and I finished sewing the binding down today while the boys were in their art class. I sat in the cafe at the New Britain Museum of American Art (if you haven't visited, you're missing out) and had a wonderful conversation with the wife of one of the museum's trustees. What a delightful way to spend the afternoon!

June Free-Motion Practice

I dutifully cut my purple scraps into the block that I've been using for free-motion practice. This particular block is not pretty - there's too much variety in the purples and I wasn't careful about separating blue-violets from red-violets. The quilting, however, came out spectacularly! It's very tightly quilted, and I tried a variety of repetitive pattern according to this month's Free-Motion Challenge tutorial. The photos give decent detail. (I just found a library book with some good info about photographing handcrafts; I'm hoping my skills in this area will develop a little.)

Too much purple variety. Nice fabrics, but they don't play well together.

I started with a small-scall checkerboard...

...added some tight echoing, meandering...

...and finished with some pebbles (those took a while!) and some circle & square spirals along the edges.