Serendipity

I recently did a short talk on photo transfer for Jean Wells' Intuitive Design class, which got me thinking about how to incorporate her style of piecing into a small photo quilt. I started with an 8" x 8" Photoshop collaged "background" and inserted the dark strip in the sample above. I finished it off with two prints on painted Lutradur and couched embellishment ribbon around the central image.

A week or so after I finished the little quilt, I came across an article in the Sept./Oct. 2009 issue of Cloth Paper Scissors called "Spontaneous Combustion" by Robin Olsen. She takes my thought process a step further and selects from a variety of "prompts" to direct the construction of her art quilts. A prompt might be "add rectangles," "add a strong horizontal," "add something ugly," etc.

I'm not the most spontaneous quilter in the world, so I'm going to develop my own list of prompts and give this a try.

My first "Simply Charming" Club is this Sunday. This month's project is a traditional pattern called "Broken Dishes" sized for 5" charm squares. This is definitely not your Granny's Christmas quilt! Laurel Burch brights give it a whole new twist. My teaching sample is mostly pastel batiks for a change of pace.

Welcome!

Working with fiber -- cloth, threads and yarns -- is what I do. I'm entranced by the possibilities and spend many joyful hours communing with my sewing machine, beads, images, paints -- you name it and I'll try to incorporate it into a quilt!