On my design wall – 2015.07.08

Now that all my immediate deadlines (to enter quilts in shows, and to send quilts to shows) have been dealt with, I can pick up where I left off on ‘Water’, the second in a series of collaborative quilts I’m making with my sister Anne.  (You can see ‘Fire’, the first of the series here.)

We’ve decided to make ‘Water’ the same size as ‘Fire’ (which is actually 22 by 57 inches, despite what my sketch says).  The color palette will be blue with bits of bright contrasting colors, and the design will be horizontal strips with curvy piecing, with a large contrasting vertical curve the length of the quilt.  We’re each going to work independently on the side sections, then when we get together again we’ll arrange them on the design wall and decide what to do with the center section.

I started with some curved piecing, mostly in various shades of blue but with some green and purple as well.  That piece is currently 13 x 31 inches.  I may add more to it, or start a separate piece with wider or skinnier curves.  Until we get together, I don’t know for sure which of my pieces will make it into the final design – I expect that some of them will get chopped up.

I wanted some other shapes that looked like water but weren’t curves.  I remembered seeing some quilts which used diamonds for water, to great effect.  One artist who does this is Jan P. Krentz.  I’ve seen a couple of other very impressive diamond art quilts on the web, but can’t figure out who the artists are – found on Flickr and Pinterest.  (If you know who made these quilts, please pass their names along so I can give them credit.)

My diamonds are about 2 inches high, so the finished size after sewing them together will be  about 1.5 inches.  I’m going to use more fabrics than what’s on my design wall right now, but I wanted to see the effect (which I like a lot), and I should probably sew some of them together to make sure I like the finished size before I cut too many more.  This going to be more time consuming than the curves, but I think having the same fabrics with the two different techniques will look great.

Anne tells me she has a huge pile of blue fabrics in her studio and has been thinking about surface design ideas that will work with our theme.  She said when she has something to show, she’ll send me photos so I can post them on my blog.

Today, I’m linking up with these blogs – click on the links below, where you’ll find many other creative projects to inspire you.