“Heirloom Pumpkins” – Day 1, PM

After working on this for about four or five hours today, I have most of the fabrics ready to fuse down. I’m liking the change to the blue background. The light yellow was just too blah. The black looks really dark at the bottom of this piece right now, but I think once I add some black on the dark orange, and some orange on the dark black, it will be a more gradual shading. There will be some detail added in the black area.

On the orange pumpkins, I stayed in the medium value range, since I'll add a lot of lighter and darker thread on top.

In the photo below, you can see how it started out. The light blue is just a background fabric that got completely covered up with the pattern pieces. The black lines on the positioning overlay (clear upholstery vinyl) help me place the pattern pieces exactly where they need to go.

In this photo, I have the dark areas at the bottom placed, and am starting to add the darker orange on the main pumpkin:

I am almost ready to start thread sketching. This is always exciting to me, since the piece totally transforms and comes alive.

“Heirloom Pumpkins” – Day 1

I am starting to prepare to cut fabric pieces for my new work, “Heirloom Pumpkins.” I researched the varieties in my photo, and discovered a great, big world of heirloom pumpkins with intriguing names like “Long Island Cheese,” “Cinderella,” “Red Kuri,” and “Jarrahdale.” There are heirloom varieties from Australia, France, Japan and New Zealand that are now common at farm markets near me. If you are interested in learning more, the website The Daily Green has great information and photos. What wonderful biodiversity there is in my favorite squash!

This is the second of two projects I am designing specifically for my Once in a Blue Moon Fiber Art Retreat, which will be held in Black Mountain, NC (near Asheville) Oct. 4-7, 2012. I just finished “Passion Flower,” which is the other project. You can read all about it in my previous posts.

The varieties in my photo appear to be Fairytale (the orange one in the foreground), Muscade de Provence (the green/orange one behind the Fairytale to the right), and Lumina (the white ones in the background).

I started digging in my bins of hand-dyes and batik fabrics, and found a good range of oranges, browns, whites, grays and blacks that I think will work. Instead of using beige or pale yellow for the wall, I'm going with a blue-gray that I think will be a nicer color combination with the oranges and whites. You can see it in the upper right, above my pattern. 

I’m sure I won’t use all of these fabrics, but I like to have a good range of values and colors before I start, so I have a bigger selection. I’ll start by finding a good medium value orange fabric, for example, and then find values lighter and darker, but in the same color family.

The photo below shows some of the whites, grays and tans I'll use on the other pumpkins. The light wasn’t so great on this photo, but it still looks like I’ll need to find a lighter white to use on the lightest white pumpkins in the back.

Okay, I'm off to start cutting out the pieces! I’ll post again when I have something to show you.

Quilt styles explained

I’m featured today on The Learning Center, hosted by Pat Sloan. The topic is quilting types and styles. Pat asked some well-known quilters to talk about a style they often work in. My post is on art quilts. Ever wonder what is meant by a “modern quilt style”? Don’t have a clue about what an ATC is? There are photos and descriptions here that will make everything clear!