Category Archives: Color

Always looking…

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I am learning to really appreciate the camera in my iPhone. It is usually with me and so I can stop and take quick pics even on my morning walk. Use your imagination and these salvias could instead be green-tipped purple trees in a Dr. Seuss landscape!

PurpSalvia-GreenTips-2

Wouldn’t the colors in this feather, used with the grays in the concrete, be perfect in a quilt?

Feather-MidwayUT-2

On the same morning walk, I noticed this water meter cover. You can’t really tell from the photo, but it was tall, the center part stuck up several inches, which is unusual. I love the mix of colors and textures. It struck me that the bright turquoise on the worn iron cover is the same as the turquoise in my shoes.

WaterMeter-MidwayUT

There are just too many cool things that a person can take a picture of!

 

A new quilt show!

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I just returned from Midway, UT, where the very first Small Town Quilt Show – In a big way! was held. Midway is a lovely place; it is only 10 minutes from Park Cities if that helps you to get a fix on it. The event was held at the Zermatt Resort and it’s a place I would happily return to.

I didn’t take pictures of the usual quilt show things because I was too busy either teaching, or shopping, to do that. There was, however, one vendor who had some really fun things made from wool. Yes, I could make these coasters but it was so much nicer to buy them!

woolcoasters

There were some exceedingly cute sock monkeys hanging on the front of the booth (and I wasn’t the only one who thought so). As it turns out they were made by Andrew, the grandson of the lady in charge. Did I get her name? Sigh, I did not. However, the receipt is from Winnie Press. This is Andrew’s very first sock monkey, made when he was 8 or 9…

AndrewsSockMonkey-01 copy copy

He follows his own monkey-making muse, rather than a strict pattern…

AndrewsSockMonkey-02 copy

The monster was my favorite :-).

AndrewsSockMonkey-03 copy

Andrew is older by a couple of years or so now, and still making monkeys. Honestly, he could go into business… there were a lot of us who would have happily bought one of his creations. Instead, I bought a kit for Jack. He’s 6, and probably a bit young for this. Or not!

 

Pixelate it!

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An image on your screen is actually made up of lots and lots of little tiny squares, each one with its own color (a pixel). We don’t see the little squares unless the image is enlarged to the point where it is no longer smooth.

Counted cross-stitched images are created by sewing x-shaped stitches, in specific colors, inside little squares that are formed by the weave of the base cloth. The images are ‘pixelated’ so it makes sense that there is a free tool for cross-stitchers to make a pixelated chart of any image.

Even if you are not a cross-stitcher, this is a cool tool. In fact, it was a quilter in my class last week who shared the site with me (thank you, Lucy!). She is making a quilted portrait of her granddaughter from little squares of fabric that she is coloring with the help of the chart she made on My Photo Stitch.

Here’s how it works: Go to myphotostitch.com and click the try it free button. I used the VW Bug image from last week’s blog post…

VWBug-SurfBoard-2

Myphotostitch.com generated the following pattern and thread chart.

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This is one of the pages with 1/4 of the chart, showing where each color goes.

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It’s always nice to find another tool for the toolbox :-).

 

 

Maybe I could paint that!

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Perspective is a technique whereby an artist implies distance on a 2-dimensional surface. This idea did not exist before the Renaissance.

Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675) went way beyond getting the perspective right in his paintings. The man was a practically a human camera—painting the image he saw nearly perfectly on canvas as you can see in his painting, The Milkmaid (1658). How on earth did he do that?

1024px-Johannes_Vermeer_-_Het_melkmeisje_-_Google_Art_Project

Tim Jennison has figured out how Vermeer could have done it. I think that you will enjoy the 10-15 minutes you will spend reading this story. All I can say is that, no matter what, I’m impressed by both Vermeer and Tim Jennison.

Some artists might use the best technology available to them to help them in their art. And it’s good to be reminded that if they do use that technology (the way great artists in the past may have used the best technology of their day), it’s not cheating. That’s a happy thought in our very tech-heavy world.

Here’s a trailer for the documentary, produced by Penn and Teller, that shows Mr. Jennison’s journey. I’m definitely going to have to watch the film.

 

 

Cloth for the table…

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My friend, Amy, has a cotton tablecloth that I love and, since she’s my friend, she took me to the store that sold things from Thailand where she bought her cloth. I bought one without even thinking about opening it up to see what size it was because I liked it so well that it didn’t really matter to me.  When I got it on my table and realized that it was square, I knew I could fix it because I can sew!

Tablecloth-1

I cut the two long sides off and sewed one to each end…

Tablecloth-3

I topstitched the seams and then hemmed the long sides. Sew easy!

Tablecloth-4

Tablecloth-5

The icing on the cake was that there were scraps large enough to make 4 napkins. Sweet.

Napkin

Thai textiles have interesting colors and patterns and are not particularly expensive. The cloth is not perfect nor is it tightly woven, but there are many fun ways to use it—pillows, garments, backs of quilts, even fronts of quilts! It’s good to remember that there are many, many different places that we can find fabric. (FYI: wash and dry the fabric in the washer and dryer a couple of times before you sew with it. It will shrink.)

I’m heading to Georgetown, TX, today to lecture and teach a workshop. I probably won’t write a blog post while I’m gone but I do hope to post to instagram. If you don’t follow me there but would like to, you can :-).

 

10% off of fabric through Sunday…

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I sent a newsletter, but if you are not on my newsletter list, you may have missed the news.. I have some new fat quarter bundles! They, and the rest of my fabric on the bolt, are all 10% off from now through Sunday. I don’t know when on Sunday. (For more on that, go to the end of the post.) The coupon code is ‘fabricfun’. Enter it in the coupon box and the discount will be applied. (If you forget to do that, we’ll take care of it when we process your order.)

WarmSet-400

Sunny Day Bundle

CoolSet-400

A Day at the Beach Bundle

Neutrals-400

Naturally Neutral Bundle

I think that each of these bundles is a great starting point for a quilt. I would take them to my stash and start adding to them!

You would have no reason to know this, but setting up a coupon in my Yahoo Store is a almost convoluted. I had a choice of when the coupon code would expire and I chose ‘through Sunday.’ It didn’t give me a choice of time zone… in fact, now that I think of it I hope it is this coming Sunday. I suppose on Monday I’ll know if that is the case or not :-). Honestly, ‘d rather be sewing than sorting out these pesky details!