Castleford Weir

Castleford is a town in West Yorkshire in the UK. It began as an important Roman settlement, later one of the major mining and industrial towns in the North of England, but more recently has fallen on hard times after pit closures and industrial decline. As part of a regeneration project a new award-winning footbridge has been built over the weir over the River Aire. I have taken this as my theme for a series of quilts for FFFC. The first is based on the mill-race:

I decided I needed to go for the subtle end of my chosen complementaries (blue and orange) with lots of greyed colours in various shades, which I dyed using colour-gradations between Procion MX Blue 2G (sometimes called cobalt, a sort of indigo blue) and orange which I mixed.

A slightly different way of using complements, but I hope I'm not cheating and it comes within the rules:

I decided on a strong vertical composition, simplifying and elongating the image in the photograph and eliminating the perspective to produce a flat poster-like surface with the water-shapes being simplified too. The whole thing has been fused to a dark-blue base fabric which I've allowed to show in places because I didn't want the effect top be too smooth.

Critiques most welcome!

Rainforest Dragon

"The leaves moved slightly to reveal a splash of red. At first, she thought it was a red poison dart frog...but suddenly she knew she was looking into the eyes of the rarest dragon of all...the Rainforest Dragon."

That's the story. A lot of my work has a bit of a story to it. I am going with my dragons for this series. So, I thought the green with the red would be good, and then the rainforest and the idea of eyes that would be mistaken for poison dart frogs could be the idea. It is a bit of a horizontal composition...(but not dead flat.)

If you can't tell where the dragon is...well, he is camoflauged! However, he is laying down with his chin flat on the floor like my dog does sometimes. You can only see the front part of his head. Are the leaves sticking up ears? I don't know, what do you think?

I found a wonderful batik at the quilt shop in the market which was perfect for the background for the rainforest. I also got the leafy one at the same time, not sure if I'd use it. but it was perfect for the camoflauge part. I fused it and fussy cut the bits out. then FME over them to hold them down. the eye is a sparkly stretch with those fake sequins on it. I thought it was suitably glistening for dragon eyes.

Challenge #25: Circle Series WIP

I'm a new kid on this block - and this is my work in progress for Challenge #25. I decided on a series theme of circles - since it has been n important symbol throughout my life. I disliked the first thin I made however - so I started again. This was a mono print that was then discharged and over painted. I am doing the surface in hand embroidery - some of which you can see in the photo here. The embroidery will take some time - so I will be late if getting the final touches on this piece. I am thoroughly enjoying learning about the tremendous talent in this group! Thanks for taking on some new kids !
Marie Johansen
http://zquilts.blogspot.com

Verticals: Renamed "My Silk Garden Wants to be a Garden Fence"

27" x 19", silk, cottons, satin, ribbon

I finally decided to make use of one of the silk scarves my son brought me from India, cutting the borders for my main vertical lines. The two blue fabrics had practically the same orange color in their patterns so they seemed to fit in well. The backing is white satin, which shows through in a few places. The pieces are lightly stuffed with Polyfil to create some three-dimensionality. I surrounded the three butterflies with very narrow blue ribbon.

As with many of my pieces, I mounted this on foam core, and I made a narrow border of the white satin, which wraps around the foam core and is hand-stitched.

June Roses

My series is Seasons and I started with spring. The orientation is diagonal. Colors red and green. I quilted the whole thing first and then sewed ribbon on for the fence. Then I appliqued silk flowers onto it. Size: 19" x13-1/2".

A Friend to the World

This is my first in a series of Native American Symbols. Right before the challenge was announced my sister came home from Arizona and gave me a book of Native American Symbols.. this was perfect timing. I paged through the book and found the owl. My time is pretty limited when it comes to my art so I thought I may have bitten off more than I could chew.. but, I finished it in 10 days. I love the color purple so I knew I wanted to use that with a complimentary color. I choose the purple/blue and the yellow/orange. I think these colors worked pretty well with this challenge. I like to raw edge applique with wonder under. All of my fabrics are cotton except the white is satin. And all of my pieces are stitched down with monofilament thread. I also like to embellish. I put a few crystals on the piece and some of that new shimmery ribbon with fusible glue on it. I always have fun with the quilting. I'm not a very good free motion quilter but, these fast friday challenges will give me a chance to improve. The quilt is 24.5 x 9.5 Laura Krasinski

THe first photo I posted looked more pink...I took this one in natural sunlight and the color is much more true. I deleted the first photo.

Signs of Fall

A day or two after this challenge was issued, I happened to be riding through the mountains on a rainy day. The sky was gray, the trees and the hills on the whole were still mostly green but now and again I saw the bright red of vines that creep up the trees and add a burst of color. I thought :"This is it! This is a complementary color scheme with some neutrals." I did not have a camera at the time but tried to keep these images in my head as I made this quilt. I cut all the pieces freehand and pinned them down, moving things around adding and subtracting until it had the look I wanted. The vines are done with needle lace (embroidery done off the surface and then attached). This let me avoid the pitfalls of heavy thread work on a quilted surface.
I would call the composition predominately vertical because of the trees but it definitely has horizontal and even diagonal elements. I guess nature does not go strictly by one set of rules. The size of this quilts is 22" x 14". I welcome your comments and/or critiques.

Detail showing one of the vines

Falling Leaves

This is a work in progress. Finished size is approximately 23" x 24". Commercial fabrics. Thread painting is mostly King Tut varigated threads.

I chose to work with fushia and lime green as my complementary fabrics. Design is diagonal with the background fabrics moving from left to right and the leaves falling from right to left.

The leaves are fused on and then thread painted using varigated threads. To complete this I will be using varigated threads to quilt leaves in the background and border.

Comments most welcome!

-- Joanna Strohn

Hi, I am a newbie, and this was my first Fast Friday. I have been looking at all the beautiful art in Challenge 25 and I feel privileged to be part of such a talented group.
My first piece is titled Garden I. The background was a UFO that I was inspired to modify and finish since red/green and diagonal lines could be used. I thought the red/green colors were meant to be the prominent colors, but I see by the comments and art displayed, that some interpreted this to mean they were to be the only colors.

This was my first experiment with making flowers with polyester organza which I painted and then melted the edges. I also used pinking-shears on used "color-catcher" sheets for some petals, and put old buttons in the centers. The bees were hand felted. The piece is 16 x 20. I plan to add vine quilting in the border (other ideas?). The background piece was quilted vertically before adding the diagonal trellis pieces.

I welcome any and all comments. Since this is my first try at this, I really would like to know if I am on the right track. Linda M

Challenge 25 - Moonlight Walk by Cynthia Ann Morgan

Here is my piece called Moonlight Walk . The first in a scenes-with-moon series inspired by japanese woodcuts. The composition is mainly vertical. I used mainly purple and yellow (though the photo looks more pinkish and bluish...it really is purple). I didn't intend to use the large amount of green in it, but it needed it, so it is not a true complementary color scheme.

The piece is 24" x 36" and constructed with fused applique and lots of little zig zag stitching to catch the edges. I'm trying to work a bit bigger this year and I'm seeing that with a detail piece like this, it is much easier to work big.

Critiques welcome!

Cynthia

At the Edge of the Bog

12.5 x 14

My series will be on vegetation. This first one was done using red-violet and yellow-green. The orientation is mostly vertical. It is machine appliqued by machine through all three layers. I haven't done any additional quilting yet. This week was filled with "have to do" things.

Night Watch

Size 8.5 x 11
Colors chosen are red-violet and yellow-green.
Line is for the most part vertical, with a diagonal branch.

I used hand-dyed fabric for the background, a commercial print for the moon and tree and I felted the owl. Red-violet roving on dark red-violet felt.
I added beads for his eyes and beak, again yellow-green for the beak, but the eyes are, I'm afraid, purple!
I also used yellow-green and red-violet roving near the base of the tree and on the ground.
Red-violet roving is drifting across the moon.
I used the same colors in thread for the quilting.
I tried hard to use just the two colors , thinking that was the challenge.
I sure was tempted to add some others but found by sticking to it it could
actually work.
I am really looking forward to your critiques and comments in general.

A great challenge Cynthia, and I am really keen on doing this series.

Carole

Sea Glass III

I have decided to continue my Sea Glass series which I began a couple of months ago.

Sea Glass III (9½ x 13) uses green and red as complementary colors. Green is one of the more common colors of sea glass (consider what colors beer and wine bottles commonly come in). Red is one of the least common. I’ve taken some artistic license and included some light pink. I’m guessing pink is more rare than red sea glass in the real world.

My original idea for a diagonal composition wasn’t working the way I had intended, and so I played with shapes until this spiral emerged. Does the small curve at the bottom help make this a diagonal composition? Perhaps this would qualify more as a circular composition.

Stripes #1, 17" x 19"

This is the first in a series of ‘Stripes’. The composition is intended to be vertical, using some horizontal as well, but with an overall vertical feeling. The complementary colors are blue and orange. It is derived from the last work I completed, an abstract piece which had vertical line quilting and long vertical rectangles placed within.

The process steps were 1) do some improvisational quilting of blue fabrics – lights and mediums, 2) border the irregular piece with dark blue indigoes, 3) create a wonky horizontal background of light and medium blues, 4) chop up the background and insert orange stripes, 5) appliqué pieced portion to background, 5) quilt vertical lines with dark blue thread, 6) use vibrant orange thread for narrow and medium satin stitches to emphasize the vertical orange stripes.

My observations are that the piece is successful in terms of the composition feeling vertical. I believe that the proportion of orange used in the stripes accomplishes this. I noticed that my ‘wonky’ horizontal stripes no longer look so ‘wonky’ when sliced and appliquéd over. Also, I think the point on the appliquéd section provides something of a focal point, but am uncertain that it is strong enough. I had hoped that the improvisational piecing in the middle would draw the viewer in, but do not think it is strong enough to accomplish that.

I would like feedback on a couple of things: 1) is enough orange included? 2) should I add something in the area of the ‘peak’ to clearly establish a focal point? 3) generally, does it feel well balanced or is it really off?

Leaves

I wanted to start simple so I would finish it. I chose leaves because the sky is the limit with ideas if I wanted to continue with this series. I chose a vertical composition with red/orange and blue/green as the complentary colors. The leaves not attached to the vine are 3-dimensional. I'm sorry the photo appears a bit fuzzy but I wanted to post it before I went out of town. I will update it once it is completely finished. The plan is to quilt it quite heavily and possibly accent with beads. I look forward to your comments and critiques.

Michele

Yellow Post-It by Penny Irwin

7.5" X 9.5"
Yellow-orange and blue-violet
grid

In the manner of Paul Klee's "signs of Yellow".

This could become part of a series based on one or a variety of painters; or a series based on grids or something else I have forgotten.
Or this might end up being a series of one. Depends a lot on the challenges to come.

I enjoy using fabrics as fabric rather than as paint. I deliberately included an obvious print; monochromatic due to the challenge. Otherwise I might have used a multicolored print.
Rather than an element for element copy of the painting, this was a playful bow to the artist's cryptic symbols. I love my art sunny side up!

Circles

For my series I am going to mainly use circles, with other geometric shapes thrown in as necessary. The quilt I have posted uses the green/red complementary palette which is not one of my favorites, but a challenge should definitely be a challenge. This past April I was honored to have been in an intensive four day class led by Liz Berg where we studied abstract design. The lessons deeply affected me in both my quilts and in my artwork. Beacuse of her lessons I feel much more confident in composition and use of color, though I do know I still have much to learn! My little quilt - 8 1/2" x 11" - is based on a series of exercises we did. Liz sent us out to do line drawings of our surroundings, and I found myself drawn to the foxgloves. When viewed as elementary shapes, they are just circles, ovals and straight lines - perfect for abstraction. I used two shades of red and added a few mid-tone green sticks to the composition.Any and all comments are always welcome.

So that's my story in a nutshell, and I'm stickin' to it!

Ann In Walnut, CA

Challenge 25 Untitled 11"x39"

My series will consist of "tribalesque" motifs I have been playing with this year. I also seem to be doing a lot of long skinny pieces lately; not sure why, but I suppose that could be considered a series as well.

I highly recommend Joen Wolfram's book "Colorplay", which I refer to often. I chose to work with the orange-yellow/blue complementary color scheme. Oddly enough, for someone who thought she had every batik in the world, I do not have any orange-yellow batiks, and even stranger, for someone who rarely buys commercial prints (except Asians), I do have these colors in my relatively small stash of prints. Weird!, but I digress...

This piece is fused, machine quilted and machine bound. I tried to use as wide a variety of values as possible in the orange-yellows, and even threw the lighter blue in, hoping to make the composition pop more. I intend to add beads or something in the centers of those light blue diamonds. I really like the square motifs, but I think the problem with the piece is that the gold logs are too closely spaced together, or maybe that the overall shape of each is just TOO square. I'm not sure I'm crazy about the light blue either. I welcome any comments or suggestions.

Thanks, Cynthia; this will surely be a great year of challenges.

Brenda Jennings

ren's unfinished #25

Sunrays

21 inches wide x 30 inches high, approximately

fabric collage

So, here is my unfinished piece. Sigh. It will get finished, just not by the end of this week.
The theme is "Solar" and the colors are Yellow-Oranges and Blue-Purples. Of course, you see no purples yet; they will be laid on with thread later.

Inunnguaq visits the Southwest

I've redone the challenge piece, and now I don't know which one I like better. Can I ask for more critiques?

Thanks,

While traveling through Ontario and Manitoba last week, we were fascinated by the piles of stones along the highway. Turns out, we'll be seeing a lot of them, as the inuksuk will be the symbol for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
Here's what Athropolis.com says about these symbols:

"Inuksuit - Signposts of the North
An "inuksuk" (pronounced "in-uk-shuk") is a monument used for communication and survival that is usually made of un-worked stones.
Inuksuit (plural) have been used by the Inuit people as guides and markers for special places in the Arctic, marking trails, caches of food, nearby people, or the migration routes of caribou.
Such a marker is of considerable importance on a landscape that could be otherwise featureless or constantly changing because of ice and snow. These "signposts" were essential for survival and Inuit tradition forbids their destruction.
An inuksuk-like monument in the form of a human being is called an inunnguaq (an imitation of a person). These seem to have been a recent development and many inunnguat (plural) are being built by non-Inuit but are incorrectly called inuksuit."

Well, my inunnguaq is visiting the American Southwest this month. He's getting acquainted with Kokopelli.
My complementary colors are red-orange and blue-green. It had to be in the southwest. I kind of think that circles above the sky are northern lights, seldom seen in New Mexico!
Critiques are always welcome - this is a pretty odd piece, actually. Measures about 13" x 19"