Chalenge 40 "ugly flowers" by Silvia Dell'Aere

Hi :) here is my quilt for the challenge 40.
My inspiration came from the "nidra latte miele" (nidra milk honey) bath gel bottle.
The bottle is all white, I think because it want to give the idea of clean, purity and a product that doesn't set upon the skin.
Then there is the "nivea" word in dark pink. I think that the pink is asreadable as the red, on white background, but don't give the "attention" or "danger" message that the red would give. Again the pink may be more attractive for women.
There is a yellow/orange drop. The colour is really close to the colour of the gel and wants to refer to the idea of the colour of honey mixed with milk.
The "palmolive" logo is white and green. This is because the storic logo is green, I don't think there is a specific purpose, is just something that "have to be".
Finally other words are in blue. The blue is very clear readable on white, but is not as "funereal" as black.



I've done a little quilt (8x9") with two flowers.
I wanted to try what happens reversing the predominance of the colours. The bottle has a lot of white, so I've decided to use very little of it, just for binding and beads, using more the colours that are less used in the bottle: blue, pink, yellow and green.
I've tried to use watersoluble pencils on silk; I've tried soaking the silk in a soda solution. It didn't help for colour spreading, but I hope it will help for colour resistance.
I've quilted and tried a sort of thread painting (my first time)
Well, this is the first time I do something different from "take the design - follow instructions", this time I've "just done it".
I'd like to hear comments, constructive critics and suggestions :)



Made by Silvia "OrkaLoca" Dell'Aere

Sweet Honesty -- Packaging

Once again, I'm late. Just after the challenge came out, I got the flu. My niece suggested several different perfume packages. After looking at several of them, I realized that for the most part, fragrance packaging uses a limited number of colors, usually with black and gold.

With the exception of fragrances which are designated "sporty" or exciting (viz Red Door and a few others) most of them are suggesting elegance and beauty and therefore have these restricted color palettes.

I went to my pantry cupboard and the only thing I could find which really said "BUY ME!" was a can of "fire roasted tomatoes" which were all natural. Therefore it was in tones of reds, with gold, black and green. I thought about doing this, but kept on going back to the image at left--an advertisement for Annick Goutal's Eau de Parfum "Eau de Hadrian" which is advertised here on Anthropologie's website.


I had been thinking about doing something with the shape of a green vase I had and this sort of just sent me right into that. The piece measures 24 5/8" high x 11" wide. I used gray Kona cotton with an overlay of a chain-stitch embroidered polyester sheer. The "tablecloth" is a piece of polyester lace in a light ecru.

The plant for the still life requirement is supposed to be a branch of
Lunaria annua which is commonly known as "honesty", "money plant," "Silver dollar plant", "Bolbonac", and "moonwort." The seed pods on this plant are transluscent silver once they have slipped their husks. I have represented them with fused layers of irredescent polyester sheer lame with the whiter ones being a piece of the lame fused to a piece of white satin before fusing it to the background. I satin stitched the stems in gold metallic thread.

The vase is a polyester damask.

I quilted the background "swirls" following right along the edge. However, I originally thought I would outline the swirls in gold. I did the interior of the piece and wasn't sure I liked it so I switched to grey for the rest of it. The seedpods of the luminaria are loosely outlined in gold mettalic thread as well.

I had originally intended a larger amount of open area (blank space) at the top of the piece...but I am afraid that the flu I was struck with on Dec. 27 made me really dopey as to what I was doing. Once I started it, I realized that I didn't cut a large enough piece to accomodate the hand basted vase and the plant....ooops!

I faced the quilt rather than using a traditional binding in gray (which I considered)....and I'm still not good at it. Critiques are gladly welcomed.

Lisa Broberg Quintana (Michigoose)

Challenge 40 - Ode to the Raisin Box by Robin M. Robboy

REVISED :

BEFORE CRITIQUE:

This was a fun challenge; my first with this group. I really enjoyed creating this piece and the way the challenge parameters called me out of my comfortable little box. It got my creative juices flowing again!

For this challenge, I began with the raisin box. This color scheme is a little of a stretch for me as I usually prefer hotter, more vibrant colors over the richer, warmer colors in the raisin box. I didn't have a plant handy and it's snowing, so I made a still life of lemons and limes on a two tiered cake stand. After photographing the still life, I manipulated the photo in Photoshop using a variety of filters. My aim was to make the image very abstract and make the color range simpler. Once I had an image I liked, I turned to my stash of decorated papers to test my ideas about the composition of this piece.

I am pleased with the finished piece - I love the way the squarish shapes turned out. I wish I had paid some attention to quilting the background BEFORE I did the heavy stitching over the edges of the shapes. I'm reluctant to add it now for fear of ruining the piece. What do you think? I would love to read your comments.

Thanks to some very helpful critiques, I added the yellow background quilting - see image at top. It really works for me. Thanks everyone!

Challenge 40 Pause by Madalene Murphy

This is the first challenge that I am entering, and I almost didn't make this one, but I found the use of product packaging colors intriguing, and after looking around my kitchen, chose one fairly quickly--a box of one of my favorite teas.  These were much        quieter colors than I usually work with but I loved the rich red brown of the edging, a brown I had actually tried for in my dyeing this summer for another project.  I also cheated a bit and chose to add the teal from the teacup on the top of the box.  So I went through my hand-dyes to see if I could come close with the colors.



My quilts also tend to be more abstract so the still life/plant requirement slowed me down a bit until I decided on abstract simple shapes with the leaves as contrast.  I played with the composition a bit  and came up with what to me is a very restful piece--like sitting down for a cup of tea.

This was great challenge.  Made me realize even packaging can be source of inspiration and made me take a whole new path to creating a quilt.  Thanks, Rhoda!

Please comment.

As I confessed on Saturday, I cheated on my still life, which is now finished. I brought a can of Progresso Soup, with its red blue and green label, into my studio. As I started pulling out fabrics I came across 6 wonderful circles in pink, orange, gold, and purple. Then I happended onto a lovely pink moire and some other wonderful pieces in my stash of upholstery fabrics.

I was off and running on my quilt. It was quite a while before I remembered the can of soup. I did see a box of Fruit Loops that had all the colors I used but only after the fact.

Most of the fabric in this quilt were on the take free table at my guild. The circles were already layered and stitched just as they are. The orange border and the binding are organza. The background is a leftover from the Chuppa ( wedding canopy) that I made for my son's wedding.

The only thing I might still do is add some shadowing on the pot with paint and do some beading in the center of the flowers.

Lilies and Roses with Salt and Pepper

When I first read this challenge I wasn't sure how I could manage.

I had ideas of doing purple and pink fluffy. Early in Dec, I tried to sell some little soft Christmas trees for decoration at a Cancer charity fund raiser, out of 70, I sold 12! But the stall next to me made a killing with purple and pink fluffy glittery girly things. however, I couldn't carry it through because I have never been a purple and pink fluffy glittery person and I never had a little girl. :) Without going to the shops and looking, I couldn't think how the layout for those things would look.
But then I remembered I bought some crisps for visitors over Christmas...not a well known brand, it just had a good price! So, anyway, here it is, and here is the result. I started looking for fabrics and remembered the gold coloured fabric which had all the colours. When I tried it to see where it might lead, I thought it could pass for kitchen curtains. So, I went for a rather abstracted kitchen still life.

The reddish flowers started being a big dalia using the tissue pompom technique with the thin transparent paperlike fabric I sometimes use. But it rather overwhelmed things, so I cut it into 3 and they became roses. The yellow flowers were going to be glads, but I couldn't figure out how to ruffle the edges, so they became lilies instead.

I used silver and metallic stitching here and there because part of the colour composition of the packaging seemed to rely on the shinyness of the bag. But there is a bit of silver behind the word tortilla, too.

The part I like the most is the clock! It seemed to need that little splash of red and white that the packaging had.

I am not sure I learned that much about colour, other than to recognise this as a version of a triadic scheme with versions of blue, red and yellow. What I have taken away with me is that packaging is a very good way to learn lessons of composition. repetition of shape including the shape repeated in a scaled version, contrast of shape, and also things like small bright spots balancing larger duller colours. I think it would be worth looking at packaging for hints of composition layout in the future.

Poinsettia

I did not immediately see myself doing this challenge, as I could not get my head around finding inspiration for a still life from packaging colours. When I saw some of the fabulous work done by others for this challenge, I found myself even less able to do anything.


I couldn't think of anything when I looked in my pantry. I found an ad for pasta in a magazine, but had no ideas for a still life.

Then by serendipity I was taking down my Christmas cards and found this painting by Donald Hamilton Fraser which had exactly the right colours and was a still life!

I free cut the poinsettia (yes, that's right, I did NOT make a freezer paper template - a first!).

One thing I found really interesting, studying the painting, was how to use different colours of thread which I would not normally use. For example orange on the green leaves, and a bright pink on the lighter edge of petals (bracts). Maybe I will get braver about colour choice, but I reckon it will be slowly!




I have not faced this, as I am thinking about matting and framing it.

I really like the various reds with the charcoal and beige. So not my normal colours.

I was not sure why the painter had such a lighter block of colour on the right, but I needed it for the cream of the pasta, so I was quite happy to copy that.

Julia

Flip Side Colors

This was a really fun challenge. Such an easy way to choose colors.

I used the package of FlipSides Pretzel Crackers. The colors say "Party".

Applibond flowers with yo-yo centers.......The sprays are beads.

21" square

Challenge 40

The challenge of using advertising for the color scheme was fun.  I choose an upholstery sample of a soft leather-like fabric for the background.  I left the grommets in place as they were round like the Cheerios in the ad, then I decorated them with thread feathers.  My subject is a Kachina collection, which I had a lot of fun with.  Bird feathers from the yard were used on the Sun Kachina.  The circle quilting design was modified from Flathead beadwork (Native America Designs 2 by Joyce Mori).  This doesn't show up well in the photo, but represents the Cherrios on the package in yellow, green and orange.  Thank you Rhoda for this fun challenge.  I found myself smiling while I was making this.  The colors are just so cheerful.  Comments welcome.  Linda Mac in WY

Completed Kalanchoes

Succulents IX and X are completed. They are done from sketches of a potted kalanchoe which sits in my kitchen. These will probably end up matted and framed similar to the last two Succulents. They are both 5 x 7 inches.

I chose my color scheme from a box of noodles. I purposely let the yellow and blue run together to create some green.

Bliss

This was such a fun challenge. I was shopping at Trader Joe's a couple of days ago and the condensed milk can caught my eye. I think it is a new product, but it was the happy colors and shapes that caught my eye. I also liked the punch of black and white in the cow and the title.

I used some prefused scraps and made this little abstract landscape. I added the work bliss because it is my focus word for 2010. I plan to hang this in my studio as a reminder to follow my bliss and not get hung up on deadlines and obstructions.

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

Carol Tackett Prize Pods

I used Duracell batteries. The challenge was very interesting. I could not settle on a product nor did I have any good magazines with ads. I was suffering from a case of vertigo so I spent three days in my chair watching TV....the ads were very interesting. Being aware of the messages sent by the color selections was a wonderful addition to my head. I did notice that food ads featured reds, greens and yellows; cleaning products use orange, yellow and navy blue, and toothpaste and mouthwash use the cooling minty greens and cool blues.

My quilt uses black and copper/orange with touches of blue and green which Duracell uses. The batteries that are just thrown away have a touch of blue and the rechargeable ones have a touch of green. This was fun and I welcome comments. I do think that my back ground got a little busy but by that time, it was too late to change.

Lucid

I have always been fascinated by the artwork on wine bottles. I am drawn to graphics that please me, and reject wines that do not. I also have a curiosity about Absinthe - when I was in Europe, I wanted to bring some back, but the Customs literature specifically said no. I think the purpose of these labels is to entice you - they impart a sense of pleasure and well being. Sort of like Alice in Wonderland: "Drink me! Drink me!"

This bottle of Absinth was on sale at Costco during the holiday season. Since I also have a black cat that is part siamese, the picture on the bottle caught my eye immediately.

The piece is mostly fused with a pieced base to look like a drape. I used water soluable crayons and pencils for shading. The glass dish was made with a silk crepe scarf.

This is my first challenge in over a year. It is hard work to be creative, and I tend to beat myself up as most artists do - there is so much talent out there. Enjoy! Now to go eat $20 worth of artichokes!

Blueberry Pancakes

I chose the Bisquick box for the colors Yellow, Blue, Red. All the pieces are cut free-hand with scissors..I fringed the place mat and raw-edge finish on all edges.

For the vase I used a sheer scarf and white sheer fabric for the water line on the vase.Leaves and stems cut from Gold(yellow)
embellished red velvet. One button flower and the large rusty-red flower was a gift from my secret pal..I cut the clip off the back and glued it to the stem.

The last ingredient...the syrup...I poured acrylic paint onto the pancakes and tilted the quilt to let the "Syrup" drip. I want to put a bit more "Syrup" on the pancakes...but the first "syrup" has to dry or it will drip off the plate. This was a real experiment not sure it would work!!

The fork is fake fur.

When I started reading about this challenge there were lots of references and good ones too...I wanted to get started on my challenge so I skipped down to Pamela Allen...She is a favorite of mine..I kind of do her style and always did the free-hand scissor cutting because...I can't draw but I can cut...And I did cut the edges of my quilt uneven!!

Still Life by Cynthia Ann Morgan

I used a Corn Chex package for my color inspiration. I like the crispness of the green and white and the pop of the red. It looks clean and healthy and natural. A bit of turquoise and gold and black add some variety. I didn't quite keep the same proportions of color (I couldn't handle that much white!), but I think it has a similiar crisp feel, don't you?

This was a very challenging challenge and we're getting some cool, interesting results. Thanks, Rhoda for putting together a great learning experience.

Cynthia

Mixed Bouquet

15 X 16 ½

This past year, I have become much more aware of how complimentary colors are used so I chose a product that featured red and green. Perhaps the calming quality of the green gives consumers some assurance that the cereal really doesn’t contain THAT much sugar.

This has been a good challenge for me as I had some difficulty with the still life concept.

Thanks Rhoda for introducing us to another stimulus and source for inspiration. Shopping trips will certainly be more interesting.

Comments are welcome and appreciated.

Pam

Cacti

I studied the psychology of color in advertising and found it quite fascinating. With the 'plant' theme and a still life, I knew exactly what I wanted to make, but I needed to find the advert that contained 'my' colors. After scouring the passel of ads that come with the newspaper, I found "Centrum Silver for Women". I studied the colors against the psychology and it was very easy to see why they use the colors they do:
Gray[silver] for 'practicality',
Purple[wines] for 'rich sophistication',
Yellow for 'happiness and good times',
Green for 'comfortable nurturing and well paced-energy',
Orange for 'fun times...energetic days',
Red for 'energy',
Blue for 'calming... actually causing the body to produce chemicals that are calming'.

So, maybe I need to run out and buy some......it just might help me with my 2010 word: YES.

My piece is based on a stand of 'mother-inlaws' tongue' cacti that appear to grow wild, albeit slowly, in our back garden. I love sitting there, looking through the citrus trees at the cacti and the colors of the fruit and bouganvillea beyond. We also have a 'resident' lizard of some kind and he just sits so very still and watches me.

I hope I have captured that and I look forward to your comments.

I had to contact my friend Sherryl Buchler in order to get the fabric I needed for the containers, that delicious 'berry' fabric.

I really enjoyed this Challenge and thank our hostess
Rhoda Forbes very much.








Size:16.75 x 19.50

Cheez-It Crackers as Inspiration

Right now, I am enamored of red/orange/yellow color schemes, so thought a box of Cheez-It crackers would fill the bill. Many in my family enjoy them, so there is often a box in my kitchen. Actually, I realized after I purchased the box and went to photograph it for this, that I completely missed the blue and black that was in it. Oh, well..!

I went looking for a photo of nature that had some red and oranges and found a photo of wild flowers in a field. I cropped the photo, used the palette knife filter, rotated it, posterized, and turned in to a sketch. Copied the sketch to plain muslin, painted it with some acrylic paint, layered and quilted some.

This piece is small, a little study piece really, about 6" x 10". I enjoyed the process of abstracting from a photo of nature and playing with the colors, and painting on the fabric.

I now am aware that there are many products with red/yellow/orange. I wonder if I simply like the colors or if I am greatly influenced by corporations marketing efforts. Coincidence or not? Since these have not always been my favorite colors, I like to think that it is just a coincidence.

As for the piece itself, it is simply a study piece that I have enjoyed creating. Thanks for the challenge. It got me thinking about everyday sights in a different way and got me to use the colors of which I am so fond, and encouraged me to work with abstracting from a photo.

Any comments are welcome.

Still Life with Melon

Above is my quilt with several changes. I darkened the rind with colored pencils, accentuated the edges of the melon, rind and flowers with darker thread, added striped strips to the borders and I quilted the whole quilt. I took to heart all of the suggestions that were made and implemented most of them. As you can see, the quilt is greatly improved. Once again, all comments are welcome.

The packaging I chose was a box of pita crackers from Trader Joe's. The colors were cool, calming and almost serene. I love working with orange and all its variations and had a great time using my stash. The challenge for me was to get enough contrast between the background and the flowers. The quilt has not been quilted yet so you may see it again when it has been completed!

Ch #40 Bliss

I love dark chocolate. My favorites are Dove and Hershey's Bliss. After researching for this challenge I found out why I always reach for the Bliss..The colors! Brown makes me feel warm, comfortable and secure, pinks, feminine and calming, and the Gold for happiness.

I chose many shades of pink/burgundy/brown for this still life. And the cream color for the highlight on the packaging, you will note some gold leaf here and there.
I had fun with this challenge, and it was a challenge with one good hand!
Is it a coincidense that my first challenge for last year was called 'Blissful Betty', and she had a chocolate cupcake....thoughts of the holidays and all the goodies I guess.

I look forward to your comments.
Happy New Year,
Rhoda

Lemons from Cheerios

I decided to use the Cheerios box since I've been eating them as long as I can remember. As I pondered the box, my eye was drawn to the stainless steel basket of lemons I have on my island, so I went with that idea. I made a small arrangement in a blue bowl and took photos. The lemons are a photo transfer to fabric, except the bottom one which is made from transfer to lutrador, my first use of this product. The bowl is also a transfer to lutrador. I added to the lutrador transfers with pastel dye sticks and watercolor pencils. Upper background is a hand dyed piece of mine. I used a new facing technique to finish it. It's about 8 1/2 by 12 inches. I'm pretty happy with it, as I challenged myself to use new products and techniques and for me, stepped out of my usual abstract/ geometric box. Comments are welcome. Thanks.

Chris Predd