Paint Flight

12" X 12"

My inspiration was the dance of paint droplets as they are adding texture to a painting.

Using analogous and visual complimentary colors, the hands and brushes were fused onto a piece of silk that was painted using ink, water and salt. The edges were hastily zig zagged so this could be completed. This is not a great technique for silk, I discovered.

Thanks for another interesting challenge. Comments welcome.

Color Movement

The size of "Color Movement" is 10 x 10. I have been doing a lot of computer manipulation of photos recently and decided to go with this for my March challenge. The design started from a photo of one of my quilts. I used the distort filter and worked with it until I came up with this design.

I had to print it on two sheets of fabric to get it the size I wanted. I then sewed them together. I really like the ways the colors moved across the area thus, the name
Color Movement.

Would really appreciate comments.

Paint Flight

12" X 12"

My inspiration was the dance of paint droplets as they are adding texture to a painting.

Using analogous and visual complimentary colors, the hands and brushes are fused applique onto a piece of silk that was painted using ink, water and salt. The edges were hastily zig zagged so this could be completed, not a great technique for silk, I discovered.

Thanks for another interesting challenge, Comments welcome.

Red Rhythms

Charity Quilt, 28" x 29"

This months Fast Friday Fabric Challenge is dance and movement. Since I have done several ballet pieces = LOVE BALLET. Ballet Trio is one of my favorites http://designerann.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-world-in-black-and-white-entries.html
[you have to scroll down], plus one of my very few abstracts, http://designerann.blogspot.com/2011/01/spinal-dance.html.

I thought I should do something different + I wanted to make something that could be a useful piece for a charity. I wanted it to be 'happy'. I had a lovely piece of red which is the back as well as the moving pieces. I used yellow and light blue for contrast. I used as many different fabrics as I have. I thought I had a pretty good stash until I tried to find some variety. Funny because I know I have very little green, but thought I had a lot of blue. This is a very good reason for stash building. [You have my permision to use me as a reference if the need for stash building is ever questioned.]

After I had completed all of the extra red stitching, I realized I had the pressure too high and thus there is some unintentional movement of the fabric.

It is done. It is warm. It is colorful. It is the best I could do. It was done with love.

BUTTERFLY BALLET

I have posted Butterfly Ballet to the album and the blog. The green leaves are all individually cut from many 'fancy' fabrics and fused onto hand dyed silk dupioni sky, then stitched to backing and batting to quilt. I created all 9 butterflies again using lots of different fabrics. They are backed and interfaced with a very stiff interfacing enabling them to 'stand' on their own. The large one has very thin copper wire stitched between the layers and can be shaped easily. It is mounted gallery wrap style and measures 11"x14". I posted a 2nd picture taken from the side to show the dimension. Another fun challenge! Comments are gratefully received Cherie

Swirls and Twirls

In a million years I would have never thought I would make a quilt featuring ballerinas. When I was a very young kid, maybe 4 or 5, my well-meaning mother enrolled me in ballet classes. I used to yawn my way through the class and then perk up when we got to tumbling, summersaulting, cartwheeling. I kept up ballet for many years and gave it up when I did a pirouette and socked myself in the face resulting in a bloody nose! Shortly after that I switched to more athletic, and less graceful, pursuits.

The piece measures 20" x 27". I fused down the background and then the figures. After that I satin stitched between everything in black. I then FM quilted the background, but not the figures.

Overall, I think I met the challenge pretty well. I like 95% of the piece. The only section I do not like is the yellow curve in the mid-lower left side - going into the border. I think it looks to chunky compared to the other curves. If I had to do this again I think I might get some of that really thin, fusible, satiny piping and use that instead of the satin stitch. I saw it recently at a quilt show but I don't know what it is called.

Thanks for a great challenge. Let me know what you think. Veronica Von Zwehl

A quick response to a fun challenge. This response was suggested by an article in the latest issue of Quilting Arts magazine. I was able to create a quick small piece with a whimsical look that I wanted to try with the challenge of creating movement. Thanks, Linda. I had fun doing this.

Dancing Octopus

20" X 24"

My first thought of DANCE was an octopus. It's a fascinating creature to watch it's kaleidoscopic movements around the coral.

This piece is fused with a blanket stitch outline. I wish I hadn't done the blanket stitch or perhaps I should have used a more neutral thread color. Background fabric is snow dyed.

Comments greatly appreciated and welcomed.

Thanks,
Pam

Joy

Joy is 13 x 11 inches. It is fused so I guess that fusing is my most fun thing. I am in the middle of getting ready for our Guild's challenge. I finished my entries but now must curate the show with a friend.

I made Joy this morning rapidly so I would have something. I think it needs something else to show better movement so please comment. I need to learn.

I think I do better when I don't have anything in my head and just start ...

The dance figures are left over from one of my challenge pieces and I will post it after the opening of our show and I get back from two weeks in warm Arizona.

Comments really needed.

Challenge 55 - Dance and Movement

FAST FRIDAY FABRIC CHALLENGE, March 2011

Linda H. MacDonald, Powell, WY

DANCE and MOVEMENT

Dance is not limited to the human form. You could choose “Dance of the Sea Turtles” for example. Or an abstract showing movement and rhythm.

Definitions:

movement: the design principle that uses some of the elements of art to produce the look of action or to cause the viewer’s eye to sweep over the art work in a certain manner.

rhythm: refers to a way of utilizing art elements to produce the look and feel of rhythmic movement with a visual tempo or beat.

I searched with Google for “dance in art” and was rewarded with many images of human form, and many others as well, such as “Meadow Dance” which is flowers http://tiny.cc/k9o10

and Heron Dance http://www.herondance.org/

More Examples:

http://www.sylvesterartquilt.com/html/center_stage.html

http://www.sylvesterartquilt.com/html/sun_dancer.html

http://tiny.cc/mox49

http://tiny.cc/8mdi1

Mary Andrews “Toot Toot Tootsie” has a lot of movement http://tiny.cc/6im2l

Abstract: “Dancing Divas” http://tiny.cc/qtunq

Larkin Jean VanHorn’s Dance http://tiny.cc/2uk7j

Margo Fiddes: http://tiny.cc/k2xqy

Dance of the Dragonfly http://www.raggedystitches.com/images/dragonfly.JPG

is a bargello pattern that shows a lot of movement.

Caryl Bryer Fallert’s “Wings of a Dream” http://tiny.cc/oqyem

A couple of my own quilts depict forms of dance as well: http://macsplace.net/dance.htm

Have fun developing your own dance or movement in fabric!

P.S. I chose “Dance and Movement” way back in September 2010. It is coincidence that PAQA South chose Movement for their exhibit with a deadline of this month. Small world.

Woven Earth

Still working small in order to finish; this one is about the size of a potholder (grin). I printed two pieces of non-woven polyester interfacing with transfer dyes - one black and one chartreuse. Then I cut them and wove them into the earth shape. The blanket stitch came next - without it the earth looked more like a green chicken ready to roast. I did some machine stitching in black trying to keep them parallel but I must have felt the beginnings of the movement of the plates in my sewing room ...

Anyway, I am pretty proud of my edge stitching. I cut the backing a smidge larger than the front and as I stitched the extra green rolled around and covered the batting. Just what I planned.

Looking forward to any comments you care to leave. Thanks for the challenge.

Challenge #54, Pam Clark

This piece was made to meet the criteria of 2 challenges:

1. FFFC's curves

2. Our quilt guild's show challenge entitled "Artistic Journey Through Time", requiring the use of the challenge fabric (the clock fabric), and the use of silver somewhere in the piece to recognize our guild's 25th anniversary. The piece has to measure less than 25" square. This piece is 20" x 22". I first pieced black and white strips and then silver strips. I made freezer paper templates for the curves, cut out my shapes and stitched them together. I wanted my black curves to signify a road. If anyone has any ideas how I might improve this piece to show more of a journey, I would be glad to accept your suggestions.

Challenge 54 Observations on a Goldfinch

As I began to think about this challenge, I found myself watching some goldfinches at the birdfeeder.  They are just beginning to show a hint of yellow as they begin to lose their winter gray.  There are a lot of them around in the summertime and they explode from the farm field edges as I walk up our road.  So my version of this challenge is an attempt to capture the colors and energy of the goldfinches in a curved format.

It's about 25" square.  I tried a machine reverse applique for this rather than fusing, and I will probably tweak the quilting some more.  Although I usually face my quilts, this one seemed to look better with the black binding.  Originally, I had designed the "bird" to be "flying" toward the upper right corner, but decided I liked the above orientation better.

I'd appreciate critiques, even though this is late . .  . again.

Liquified Scotland

I posted Liquefied Scotland as my challenge work for number 54. I used Photoshop to make the circles, using the liquefy filter. I tried to quilt on the lines -- not so good at machine quilting. Need practice! Rosemary in St. Louis

Celtic Knot

This is late coming. My first attempt did not work out and so wasted three days. After starting over again, I came up with the Celtic Knot Quilt. Curving a straight line and interweaving the lines in and out and then finally connecting. It was bit of a challenge, but it was lots of fun. It felt like putting a jigsaw puzzle togther. The quilt is 22" X 22". Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Tangled

This Fast Friday Fabric Challenge was in some ways similar to last months challenge. I didn't want to do the same type of tangle, so this time I used fabric. My intent was to fuse it down and then do some free motion. Unfortunately, I used 'HeatnBond lite'. After bonding it, some of the pieces released, ie floated un-attached. Therefore, I edge stitched all the pieces down. Tough job because I did not want to cross over the wrong edge. This meant LOTS of stops and starts and therefore LOTS of work hiding those stops and starts.

Tangled

Tropical Fracture

I silk screened this piece some time ago with the intent of seeing how several printings on top of each other would look. The dye was very transparent so the underlying colors did not change too much. I need another few challenge months to finish the beading on this piece! Bonnie Ouellette, Seneca, SC

My inspiration for this piece came from some words from the book, "Under the Tuscan Sun" which were "bright, colorful and swirly". I can't remember what they pertained to but the image stuck in my mind. I drew a quick sketch and tried several more versions but the first one still seemed the best. With more time, I might have explored a better design. I used my own and some purchased hand dyed fabrics plus a very dark blue (which looks black in the photo) for fabrics. The streamers were quilted using my Acufeed foot on my new Horizon. I found it easy to wiggle the fabric to make the curvy lines even with the feeddog up. The background was free motion quilted in circles with metallic thread-which of course doesn't show up at all on the photo except for a light spot here or there. I have not finished the edges yet-will probably face it. I'm not 100% pleased with the piece but it was fun to do and to use bright colors which I don't usually use.

I posted a horizontal and a vertical version. Any comments on which you like better? The piece is 17" x 21".

Nancy Schlegel

Curvilinear Pinwheels

I designed  Curvilinear Pinwheels  with Make the Cut software. It was then cut with the Cricut and quilted to emphasize the 3 dimensional design. It is b y 11x 19"

Meena

Challenge 54 - Three Daisies

I've posted my piece Three Daisies; not only does it have three daisies but I had made three attempts for this challenge.

Basically I stuck at cool colors turquoise, purple and lime green. Curvy sky and curvy grass. Actually size about 21 x 22 inches.

Lisa
In Sunny cold Seattle

Honeycomb

The piece measures 22" x 40". I used a cream fabric for the base. I fused wonder-under to three pieces of fabric (green, orange and mixed) which were also 22x40. I then traced large circles on each fabric and cut the circles out. I layerd the three fabrics down and then sliced some of the areas between the circles and tucked them under the overlapping fabrics. (Not sure this makes sense!) Then I fused the whole thing together and quilted it with spirals.

Challenge 54 "Leaning Toward Spring"

This little piece is 12” x 9 ½”. I’m not sure that it meets the challenge—but MY challenge was to do something and get it done on time! It has been a long time since I’ve done a challenge. I quilted the background in curves and then did the applique work. I sit here surrounded by snow very much feeling the draw of Spring!!

Uphill Both Ways

On a recent vacation to a mountainous region, we had the privilege of walking the children to school each morning. We were stunned, when after walking uphill to the school we found that the return trip was also uphill and seemed even steeper than the walk to school.

When I saw the challenge to use curvilinear forms, my initial journal sketch of the walk to school became the inspiration for this quilt "Uphill Both Ways." It is approximately 10" x 10" and is fused and minimally quilted to enhance the curved roadways between the house and the school.

Thank you for this challenge, I really enjoyed working on it. Ticia Wicks

Breezy

Breezy by Laura West Kong

This may be the record for slowest ever FFFC quilt. Here's my quilt, Breezy, from challenge #1.

The batik petals are machine appliqued and the wool felt leaves are hand beaded and appliqued with rayon embroidery floss. Breezy is sashiko hand quilted with topstitching thread. At 15-½" x 33-½" there wasn't much chance of my finishing all that in a week, but I'm glad I waited to do it the way I imagined it should be. ... Now I'm a wiser Fast Friday quilter.

Breezy, detail

Profile

Curvilinear Perspective threw me for a loop; that is until I took a deep breath and really thought about it. In my mind I kept seeing this girl's face in profile, with a sixties-style hair-do. After a quick sketch, I pawed through my stash to find fabrics to create just the right mood. The hair is overlaid on black to give it depth. Yes, I know the wavy-cut binding edges are crooked, but I had to hurry to finish. While I was doing the binding, we sold our house!!

"Path Home" Fast Friday Fabric Challenge 54

Path Home

15" by 15"

I started with a sketch of the curved house and path. I added the trees and lots and lots of free motion embroidery. Cotton fabrics, embroidery thread, collected threads and oil based paint sticks to highlight the sun. I just worked this as I went along.

Janice, thank you for the Curvilinear Perspective:) This was a challenge for me, not sure if I got the whole perspective and depth, I think it sort of fits. I had fun learning this technique. Great idea!

Susan Ward aka Susanpi2

Imagination is the power of forming mental images of what is not present:) What a wonderful thing.
Quilting In Kentucky

http://artquiltssusanpi.blogspot.com/

Love

This is shown in a vortex sort of way showing loving hands encircling a couple. All fused and stitched to show features.

Silver Moon

I hope this fits the category. I used the bottom of a can for the moon.

Challenge 54 Leafy Tropics

For this challenge I cropped a section of a photo I took at a botanical garden. The final piece is only 8 by 14 inches, I have it pinned here to a canvas which is the way I'll probably display it, altho I may cover the canvas with fabric or paint it. I layered the fabrics to create the leaves and shadows, satin stitched, quilted, and highlighted with colored pencils. Thanks, Janice for a great challenge, especially since I've been lost in the desert of no motivation and this got me working again at least for this piece! All comments appreciated.

Fireworks Zentangle

This Zentangle looks like someone pointing to a fabulous firework display. If you look closely you can see that I beaded the firework with shiny clear beads in keeping with the black and white theme of Zentangles.

This one was fun!

Jeri in Ballwin MO

Beagle Zentangle

I have been experimenting with fabric Zentangles. I am still experimenting with technique and details.

When this one was finished at 9" x 12", it reminded me of my beagle.

I've been told that if I rotate it 180 degrees it looks like Sunbonnet Sue playing tennis.

Jeri in Ballwin MO

prelude to sunset

I haven't bound this quilt yet but otherwise I think it is finished. I stacked three pieces of fabric, drew curved lines and stitched on them, then cut away the unwanted fabric from each layer - rather like a mola technique. When I finished it looked alot like abstract clouds. I echo quilted the sky leaving the clouds unquilted for depth, added roving and angelina to be felted on in spots and voila- a quilt Any and all suggestions are allways welcome and taken to heart.

Thank You

Pat Havey

Challenge 54, Seahorse

I choose a seahorse for this challenge because I am working on an under-the-sea project, and I can incorporate this applique piece into it. The size is 12 1/2 by 12 1/2 inches. It will be quilted at the time the finished piece is quilted.

The background and seaweed are hand dyed fabrics. The seahorse is from batiks colored with markers.  A sheer nylon film is over the top, to give an underwater look. The fins are made with Angelina fibers and catch the light.
Thank you Jancie for this fun challenge.  My first attempt at curvilinear perspective.

Palms Along the Beach

22 1/2" x 16 1/4"

4/25/11

I did after all add a bit of seaweed and shells to the beach, and a bit of shading to the far side of the point. I think it has helped; the beach seemed too empty before!

---------

Perspective can be shown by lines that converge in the distance, so making it curvilinear suggested the waves of water coming in to a beach. The near part of the piece came quickly to me, then I decided this part of the beach was a spit of land, going back to sand and water on the other side. The palm trees provide some contrast and somewhat obscure the strictly linear horizon, which certainly could not be other than horizontal! I used eyelash yarn for the palm fronds, sewn on with a cross-hatch kind of stitch that gives some texture to them.

I may add or draw some small shells and seaweed on the beach.

As always, I appreciate any comments and suggestions. Thanks, Janice, for a fun challenge.