New Project

I've written about my FANE group and the challenges we do.  They really keep me busy.  One of the exhibits we did last year was an exhibit of kimono-like pieces.  They were displayed on special wooden stands in their own room as a special exhibit of the Northern Star Quilters Guild.  You can see pictures of them here.  The exhibit was very well received and we decided to do something where we could use those stands again.  After some brainstorming we came up with the idea of Opposites.  The long, 18" x 52" pieces would hang over the stand and have one side opposite the other in any way that you want.

I decided to do one long piece that would not have an up or down if it was later hung on the wall  I originally wanted to do black and white, but couldn't come up with a way to do it successfully.  Then I remembered the Journal Pages that I had made for an exhibit at the IQA Quilt Show in Houston several years ago.  Actually I did the Journal Pages three years in a row, but the one that got me thinking was one page from the year that I did Ginkgo leaves.  Every month I did something different with the ginkgoes. I've long had a fondness for ginkgo leaves and have made several quilts that feature them.  If you notice I even have a section of my quilt, "Technicolor Ginkgoes" as the banner for my blog.  There's just something about their shape that has such grace and movement.

This was one of my favorites and it was picked to be a full page in the book that was published after that project was over.  It used all my hand-dyed fabrics and I often thought that I would like to explore this as a larger quilt.  Aha, this would work for this project.  If folded in half it would have a dark side and a light side......dark on light, light on dark.....opposites!

I did a lot of free-motion quilting on it and thought that it really enhanced the quilt.

I even liked the back where I also used my hand-dyed fabric.

So taking advantage of these snowy days we've been having I dyed a 15 step gradation of rust fabrics for the background then edited it down to 10.  I had a lot of blues in my stash and was able to make colors gradations of three different blues (L to R, Midnight, Wedgwood, and Intense).  I only had to dye two quarter yards of very light of each of the blues. The lame squares are two different blues, light on dark and darker on light, although they look the same here.  Right now the leaves are just fused down.  This will be heavily quilted just like the small journal page. The Journal Pages were just 8" x 11" and the new piece is 18" x 52", a lot of quilting!

Now picture this quilted and it will look this way on one side.....

and this way on the other side.  I will post pictures when it is quilted.

I'm linking up with Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday".  Go see what some very talented artists are doing and leave comments.   We all love comments.