Category Archives: Color

A new look Thru Grandmother’s Window…

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Linda has been busy updating our what was our very 1st block of the month, Thru Grandmother’s Window. Isn’t it beautiful!

tgw-9block

Linda also made the original 12-block quilt in 1995, below.

thruquilt

Linda updated all 12 blocks for the pattern covers, even though she only used 9 of the blocks in her quilt.

11-pioneernights-100008-frtofvine-1000 02-twirltulips-1000

Each pattern includes new yardage, cutting, and border instructions. Color photos of both quilts are included in each pattern, along with a color photo of the new block.

The patterns are available individually or in a set of 12.  Click here to find Thru Grandmother’s Window Downloadable Patterns. I don’t have fabric kits but these colors are readily available in quilt shops and online. I encourage you to go on a fabric hunt.

You saw it here first! I’ll send a newsletter announcing the updated Thru Grandmother’s Window Downloadable Patterns tomorrow. Happy stitching!

Desert views…

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Linda and Paul live outside of Buckeye, AZ, and the landscape is beautiful in a flat, dry, desert-y sort of way. The colors are intense and the sky is so big! I like the look of power lines running off into the far distance in the photo below.

powerlines-buckeye-01

Sun City Festival, the community where Linda and Paul live, is planted with mostly native plants that don’t require a lot of water and can tolerate the heat. I’ve been walking this path in the morning.

buckeye-walk

I had forgotten how green the bark is on a Palo Verde tree. They make me happy, especially against a blue sky.

buckeye-paloverde

There are palm trees, but only where they get water.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in such an open place. It feels good, more relaxed, but maybe that’s because I’m on vacation with my best friend :-).

Figuring it out…

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When designing a quilt from a photo, you have to figure out where to start. I opened my photo in Photoshop and cropped in to focus attention on the part of the photo that I liked best.

KauaiRoad-01-Cropped

I usually work in Adobe Illustrator where I can make layers and trace over a photo to make a pattern. But there’s a cool filter in Photoshop called Find Edges. I used it to generate this almost-drawing:

KauaiRoad-01-Edges

I am not going to fuse or glue this quilt. The pieces will be pinned, then basted on a light fabric base. I projected the image onto a 60″ x 60″ piece of thin, prewashed, white muslin on my design wall. I used a soft pencil to draw a stylized version of the image onto the fabric.

I decided to work loosely, cutting fabric to fill in the different areas without making templates or pattern pieces. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the drawing needed to be on an overlay so that I could still see it as I added fabric to the wall. I cut a great big piece of upholstery vinyl, pinned it over the muslin, and traced the lines with a regular Sharpie marker—the kind that comes to a blunt point.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I’m not aiming for photo realism here. Instead, I’m working in a looser, slightly more impressionistic fashion. It is both scary and fun!

You never know what you’ll see if you just look…

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I stayed in San Clemente while visiting the Surfside Quilt Guild and my hotel was just a mile from the beach. The one mile walk down to the beach was very nice, the uphill mile back to the hotel was good exercise :-).

I walked to pier for the last time Wednesday morning and took photos of seagulls because I think they are cute.

SEAGULLS-1

They look like birds with an interesting attitude… sort of nonchalant and friendly. And these guys were posing for me so I got closer…

SEAGULLS-2

Close enough to notice that their tails are dotted!

SEAGULLS-3

Who knew! And once you notice the dots, don’t don’t you think that they pull the black and white color scheme of the feathers together? Nature is just jam-packed with little quirky details.

 

 

Show and tell…

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Judy Burrell attended my Pick-Up Sticks class in October 2015 in Monument Colorado. I love it in purple!

Pick Up Sticks by Judy Burrell

Pick Up Sticks by Judy Burrell

You can find this pattern in The Quilters Practical Guide to Color. It’s a lot of fun to make, and kind of addicting :-).

Autumn photo challenge…

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My friend, Catherine, and I are both taking Ricky’s 52 Week Photo Challenge. This week the challenge is ‘autumn’. What a great excuse to go to the Dallas Arboretum! Let me just say, they have the most amazing array of pumpkins, gourds, and autumn flowers on display. Every year, it gets better.

Catherine took this photo of me :-).

Catherine took this photo of me :-).

For me, the photography challenge was to choose the correct aperture and to manually focus. I had to cull many photos, but there were a surprising number of good ones in the group. We also learned some new editing tricks in Lightroom this week that I am very happy to know.

Of the 209 photos I took, I think these are my best choices. Of these, I have several favorites. I’d love it if you let me know which photo you think says ‘Autumn’ AND is also a good photo—in focus, framed well, overall just a nice composition. I thank you in advance the time you spend doing this :-).

FYI: Click on the photo galleries to see bigger photos. Look for the right and left arrows to scroll through the gallery.

#4
#68
#36
#61

I took a lot of street-scene-with-pumpkin photos. We went on mother and baby/little kid day. The children were decked out to be photographed with the pumpkins and adults were snapping away like crazy. There were also a lot of adults without children in tow (like us) who were there to soak up a beautiful day.

#51
#2
#48

This is a yearly display at the Arboretum. Right now the pumpkins are firm and looking good. As they sit out in the sun, and later, after we begin to get overnight freezes, they get soft and tired. The display ends at Thanksgiving, but by then they are well past their prime. If you are nearby, now is definitely the time to go!