Tribal pillow cover

Tribal pillow cover, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

This began life as a challenge to make a design using split complementary colors which are yellow, orange and blue.

The blue fabric was discharged with thiox to get the pink tones and white lines.

It is raw edge applique made by folding the fabric and cutting the same way you make paper snowflakes. I see a bird, a fish and figures from a totem pole, but I expect everyone sees their own thing.

Later I wanted to make a very vivid pillowcase to help me get used to carrying a lumbar cushion around with me so I enlarged it into a cushion cover and on the other side my phone number is written in indelible marker.

Early pillow cover

Early pillow cover, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

There's a whole story to this one.

When I made my first quilt it was in a class and I had no stash. Picking the fabric took forever because the teacher was helping me and giving me almost more guidance than I thought I wanted!

When I picked out the blue fabric with the yellow stars she didn't want me to. Most of the other fabrics I picked were tone-on-tone and she had urged me to pick out something with more than one color. But she didn't articulate the real reason not to pick the yellow stars, which was that there was no other yellow at all in the other fabrics. She just said "You're going to MAKE stars" because the Ohio Star block was in the quilt.

Anyway I made a Puss in the corner block, but when it came time to assemble the quilt she again stressed it would not be right for the rest of the quilt (she was right) So I bought more fabric in some other more suitable design/color, and then bought more of this and the tan basketwork fabric and a tan star fabric to make the backing of this.

King of Beasts

King of Beasts, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

There's a Gee's Bend flavor to this, the first quilt I designed myself. I am not, and never will be, a technician! The center is from an English t-shirt, much loved gift from Grandpa, which started falling apart.

I did not know about stablizer, I could only make the quilt fit by working with 2" squares. The blue L round the lion was how I evened the center up to be able to surround with the other squares. i had next to no stash. The blue is deconstructed thrifted capris my DXH made me buy to wear in Florida and the turquoise and yellow is a thrifted dirndl skirt from the 60s I would guess.

Made in 1998.

Part I -- Can't believe I never blogged this ...

... or perhaps I did on my old yahoo blog and never thought to re-post here.

These fabrics were used as prayer rugs at a family marriage contract. They were carefully chosen by a couple of criteria

(1) absolutely could not have any animals or people in the design

(2) had to have enough yardage to spread out flat on the floor and be a decent size

the fact that the resulting choices are quite international is a very happy coincidence!

The one on the left is stars, just stars, which have a universal significance ... at one point this was earmarked for a Blue African quilt -- there are yards and yards of this so even with using some on the back of the wedding quilt there will be leftovers.

The ikat on the right is from Laos. It's too heavy to use in the quilt so I hemmed the ends and presented it to the happy couple (one of whom actually knelt on it at the wedding prayers) as a prayer rug for continued use.

The two in the post below, Japanese and African, will go on the back of the quilt.

Can't believe I never blogged this

Real African fabric from Dakar, Senegal

Japanese inspired Kaufman

Spring colors

Spring colors, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

This is my color picks for March -- previous time I did this exercise was back in December.

I notice that except for the purple and orange, all the colors seem to be grayed down. Today I look at the yellow and I don't like it! yeck!

another yellow rule breaker

quilt VI, originally uploaded by bradrobinson.

Brad Robinson is another quilter who cheerfully ignores that stupid 7 percent rule.

Makes me want to hop a plane to Paris! perhaps they are decorating fabrics rather than quilting fabrics?

In England I was disappointed that the fabric is mostly the same as in the U.S. only more expensive, except for some plastic tablecloth yardage with wavy impressionistic Union Jacks on it -- heavy and space hogging in the suitcase so I never bought any.

It's wonderful to have a world culture but getting things that are unique to the place you visit gets increasingly challenging!

Spring stash

Spring stash, originally uploaded by wordnerd411.

I'm in the Stash Sunday flickr group and last week's topic was spring.

The colors are off -- the green is much brighter and the fabric in the background is a custardy creamy yellow.