Thursday, August 20, 2009

Gray Plus One, #2

This is the second quilt I made for my quilt group's challenge, Gray Plus One, in which we are to use only shades of gray and one other color. My first one, "City Lights" used yellow and this one, as yet unnamed" uses turquoise. I was going to do an elephant quilt, but my friend Carolyn urged me to make another abstract, since that seems to be my thing. She was right and I had a lot of fun making this. Although, as with my City Lights quilt, I had a hard time keeping to the size restriction, 18 x 24. Even though I thought I had it just right, after quilting and squaring up, it falls a bit short. Oh, well, I tried.

I also had a difficult time deciding how to quilt it. I stared at it for a week before I took the plunge. I thought that straight line walking foot quilting would look good, but didn't want to do the whole thing that way, too tedious and labor intensive. And I didn't want to do anything wavy or curvy. So I ended up doing some straight lines, mostly on the silk Dupioni, free motion angular meandering and some innies/outies on the hand dyed cotton.
As for the name, I'm thinking of "No Elephants Here" and let everyone who sees it wonder why, or just add it to my Configurations Series, this being #8

15 comments:

Benedicte said...

I love it, Norma! I can see why it is hard to stay with the size restrictions. It looks as if the quilt wants to grow. I love all the variations of greys and the vibrancy of the turquoise asserting itself among the greys.

Nina Marie said...

Wow! who knew that gray was so great! I really - really like this. I too have had trouble on how to quilt my abstracted pieces. I like the way you did it. This inspires me to pull out my Dupionis!

Barb Forrister said...

It's a beautiful piece, Norma. Thanks for sharing.

Anonymous said...

I really like this, Norma. I'm looking forward to seeing the whole exhibit. I need to get quilting on mine!

Lisa Dunn said...

Your quilt is beautiful! I love the way the turquoise and the grays look together. I love the name "No elephants here." :o)

Leslie said...

Oh, I love it. grey to sooth and turq. blue to make me happy. Great piece.

Art by Rhoda Forbes said...

Beautiful Norma, it is amazing what you can do with grey and one other color.
Love it.

Diane Wright said...

Like the others, I an inspired by your gray series! The "No Elephants Here" is a perfect title. Keep up the great work.

Wendy said...

I think you should call it 'no elephants' and let the viewer make up their mind what you are saying. I bet each one would come up with a different reason. Grey is such a difficult colour to work with, the zingy turquoise works very well.

Lori Gravley said...

This is beautiful. Your grays are spectacular and I love the combining it with one other color. Very nice.

Rayna said...

Another winner!

Linda Laird said...

Dear Norma,
What a beautiful piece! Bright colors are usually my thing, but grey has been calling out to me lately.

Keep up the good work,
Linda Laird
Quiltart list

Anonymous said...

Fabulous!

CCC

Margaret McCarthy Hunt said...

Beautiful job Norma...

Anonymous said...

It's lovely! I AM going to have to remember hos great it looks with just one other color...both the quilts youv'e done like that really sing!