Sunday, January 03, 2010

Still Life with Vase and Bottle

Rhoda's challenge made me scour my cabinets to see what kind of products I had bought. Dull beige and white adult cereal boxes weren't inspiring; the colorful oatmeal box (contrary to Rhoda's theory!) had too many primary colors in it;finally a box of Asia Specialties noodles with a sophisticated color scheme caught me eye, partly because the blue in there meant I could use the blue wine bottle that I've wanted to use in a quilt for a long time.

The inspiration, the design and the fabrics sat on my sewing table for the week while I procrastinated starting. Finally said "Just do it" Saturday afternoon and finished it in several hours. It is only 8 1/2" x 11", fused, with some basic machine quilting done on it. No binding yet. But I am very satisfied with the outcome and feel I stayed fairly true to the colors and proportions in the box.

Lessons I learned: (1)You will never create anything unless you start. (2)Make sure your teflon sheet is free of fusible gunk before using it. (3) Don't try to do fancy spiral free motion quilting late in the afternoon on black fabric with black thread. (4)Be flexible to make changes even in the quilting stage-the original flowers just keeping saying "yuck" to me so they got pulled off and redone as tulips.

I can see doing more still life quilts in the future having successfully finished this one. Now back to snow shoveling.

Nancy Schlegel, Albany NY

6 comments:

Roberta Ranney said...

Hi Nancy - You did a great job capturing the colors from the box. The blue bottle looks really good against both the browns and the black and the little bits of red-orange add just the right amount of pop. Very nice work!

Carole said...

Sure do like that color blue Nancy... your colors really pick up the colors in the packaging. A very sophisticated look... shall we say 'discerning taste'?
Nicely done.

Jan said...

Love this piece! The blue is perfect. With some Asian letters on the black background this would be a perfect Oriental piece. Great piece anyway you look at it.

Art by Rhoda Forbes said...

Wow, this is a very nice serene still life. Great job, I look forward to more of your still lifes :)

Joni said...

Nancy, this is a very crisp and yet calm piece, I like the sharp contrast of the vases with the background. The gradations of the brown on the table give the piece depth. Great job! I had to chuckle at your lessons learned... I struggle with the same things.

Pam Harris said...

Very elegant and realistic. I especially like that you put some leaves on the table. Great use of color.