I wrote yesterday about a quilt I made for my International Threads group challenge, responding to the prompt "green.". I'm embarrassed to say that in the rush of making three huge quilts for a Quilt National entry, I got way behind in my work for International Threads. But I'm almost caught up now. Here's how I made a quilt for our "autumn colors" challenge.
After I finished the Quilt National things, I decided I needed to do some cleaning of the studio and was sorting and consolidating a bunch of samples that I had made in Nancy Crow workshops a long time ago. I came upon this piece,
My first thought was just to take the left-hand part of the composition, trim it to size and quilt it, but then decided that would be a kissoff. It needed something more.
There were no leftover bits of the autumn colors fabric in the bag with this piece, but fortunately in my cleanup I had also come upon some yellow, orange and red fabrics that were sitting there waiting to be put away, and I used them for fine lines. Here's what I came up with:
In my long artistic career I can't tell you how many times serendipity has played a huge role. The fact that I hate to clean up the studio and put things away means there's often something sitting around wanting to play.
For my green quilt, it started with the pile of fabrics that I had lent to somebody else who needed some green, and never put away after she returned what she didn't need. For this quilt, it was the found work-in-progress plus the red and orange solids.
I think that my messy studio is not a sign of moral turpitude, but an integral part of the way I work. If everything had been neatly put away neither of these two quilts would have happened. And I suspect that had I started from a clean worktable and an empty mind, I might not have had nearly as much fun.
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