Tag: inspired by nature

Posted in quilting

Under the Sea WIP

Posted on by Laura Kate

I spent a good handful of hours this past weekend sewing up blocks for the Under the Sea quilt. So I thought I would show my progress.

My plan calls for 12 quilt sections made up of 4 blocks each. The blocks are constructed in Log Cabin chevron style. Each section will feature a different underwater animal. Here are the three I just completed.

The first two have coral reef fish swimming in formation. These will be placed across the top of the quilt. The third has starfish, which will end up somewhere in the middle.

I placed an order at Connecting Threads for more batik fabric that contains some harmonizing greens. Until the fabric is delivered, I can design and construct the sea creatures for the remaining blocks. So far I have baby turtles. I want to try making jellyfish, which sea turtles love to gobble up. and maybe some more coral reef fish.

Other ideas? Any suggestions will be dutifully pondered.

Link to Connection Threads website:

https://www.connectingthreads.com/fabrics/quilting-fabrics

Posted in quilting

Gorgeous and Productive Day

Posted on by Laura Kate

Today’s weather was quite remarkable, for August. Upon rising, the air was 66 degrees and winds were calm. It stayed so cool all day long that the A/C didn’t even turn on until early evening. I enjoyed the backyard for an hour or so and did a modest amount of gardening. It was almost 11 before I resumed work on my current project.

Appliqueing the turtle was really fun. After some fiddling about with the shapes and color choices, my center medallion looks like this:

Combination of batiks and hand-painted fabrics.

More dimension and texture will be added when I stitch it. I painted the turtle’s head Very Slowly, using Jacquard Textile paint mixed with floating medium. I rather like the primitive-like quality resulting from the bright colors and blocky shapes. This piece is roughly 20″ by 14 and 1/2″. To make it into a square, I made a strip with my baby turtle stenciled blocks and added it at the top.

I like what I see so far. But now, the hard part. I will need to build a quilt around it. I’m thinking about log cabin blocks, mostly because I purchased a package of pre-cut 2 and 1/2 inch strips. Here they are:

These are all so pretty. And a nice range of tones.

You can see also see a few fishy blocks that I made months ago using the stitch n flip technique. These could become log cabin centers……..or I could group them into a block of their own. That would make a school of fish.

Okay, quilting bloggers, this is an invitation to weigh in on this design. Any thoughts?

Posted in painting, quilting

Hello Turtle – Under the Sea Project

Posted on by Laura Kate

I have a bag full of fabric, sketches and some small quilt blocks that have been languishing in my closet for too long. The time has come to start working in earnest on this quilt. The tipping point came when I decided to organize the blocks around a medallion center. I chose this photograph as the feature image.

After making a sketch,

……. yesterday I grabbed my last piece of white fabric and painted it a sea green color with Dye-na-flow paint. I used a “mask’ and some stones on top of the fabric while it dried in the sun to reserve a turtle-like shape.

Now I can select some fabrics to applique on top of the base fabric. Here is a selection that will be used to make the sea turtle.

Oranges for the shell, blacks for the flippers and shadow areas. The white is for the head.

Once I get the shapes cut and fused to the base fabric, I will hand paint any needed details.

This is a short post. I’m keen to keep my momentum going. More details will be revealed soon.

Posted in painting

#Worldwatercolormonth This week’s work

Posted on by Laura Kate

My poor sewing machine has been relegated to the bookshelf while my paintbrushes are getting quite a work-out. I am making a painting everyday in conjunction with WorldWatercolorMonth.

Here is a selection of paintings completed this week. Each one is headed with the daily prompt that directed the painting’s subject matter.

7-13-20 Twisted. This gray-haired yogi is from an older generation, and she is flexible and strong.

7-14-20 Green. The reference photo is a Japanese painted fern, a cool, grey-green.

7-15-20 Forgotten. I’m told that umbrellas are the items most often left behind at museums. This sad blue umbrella was left at the terrace cafe.

7-16-20 Machine. All I could think of was Leonardo da Vici’s marvelous drawings. Here are two of da Vici’s machines done in pencil with color wash on top. I even added some reverse-image handwriting as practiced by da Vici.

7-17-20 Spontaneous. Angela Fehr provided a tutorial on painting spontaneously. This was made following her example. After throwing down some sepia lines, I spontaneously added purple and yellow patches. The painting began to reveal itself as a mountain meadow in early summer.

After today, I will be taking a pause from painting. Tomorrow we leave for Wisconsin. The lure of the North woods is irresistible, wherein resides our daughter and her family. The trip promises to be a cool and noisy respite from our state of self-isolation.

See you in a week or so.

Posted in painting

Bird of Paradise Work in Progress

Posted on by Laura Kate

I have been collecting images of the tropical flower called Bird of Paradise for a few months now. Initially I wanted to make quilt blocks with this flower as a motif. But lately, I have been charmed by this photograph offered by the San Diego Zoo, of a flower with hummingbird.

I decided it would be a perfect reference for a water color painting. There are three techniques that I could practice from this one photograph: color mixing, background washing and masking.

It occurred to me that I would be more successful if I practiced each of these techniques separately, before combining them into a finished painting. My first study was the hummingbird.

The masking fluid allowed me to reserve the white margins on the breast feathers and the wings. I think he came out quite nicely. While I was at it, I used the same paper to determine the color mixes for the rest of the painting. You can see my little notes penciled in above the bird.

As an aside – Did you know that hummingbirds are the primary pollinators for Bird–of-Paradise flowers?

Yesterday I painted a small study of the whole image. The scariest part was the very dark background wash. I used a mix of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, with a small amount of lemon yellow to neutralize the blue.

This study is on 5″ by 8″ Strathmore travel journal

I feel I was successful in laying down the wash correctly, but it isn’t quite dark enough. There is also insufficient contrast between the bird and the background. And what can I do to make the petals more luminous?

Palette: Lemon Yellow, New Gamboge, Winsor Transparent Orange, Thalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, Quinacridone Red.