Take it Further Challenge Teaser

I am taking part in Sharon B's monthly "Take it Further Challenge" where each month we are given either a theme or a color scheme on which to base a piece of art. This month, I opted for the color scheme, which was light purple, dark purple, sage/ mint green, chartruse, and charcol. A very different color scheme than I would have put together, so it was a challenge, but fun to work outside my comfort zone. I selected my fabrics, planned the quilt and sketched it out and went to work. When the blocks were sewn, I stood back, and decided that I HATED it! But I had too much time and materials invested in it, and no more of the charcol or chartruse fabrics, and I am really trying not to buy a lot of fabric, so I came up with Plan B. I am putting the binding on right now, so I will post it when it is done. But here is a teaser of the "before" block.

Happy New Year

Wow, another year gone by. I am excited about the possibilities that 2008 has to offer. After a couple of difficult years with several deaths in the family among other life issues, I am hoping that 2008 shapes up a little differently. Of course, I have been considering many New Year's Resolutions, maybe I will post them another time. But for now, I thought that I would reflect a litle bit on the work that I have done in 2007 for my quilt pattern design company, Elizabeth Anne Quilt Designs. You can see some of my other patterns on my website www.elizabethanne.cc
I usually don't post my business stuff on my blog, but sometimes the line is blurry between my art blog, and what I do for a living, and I am very proud of the work that I accomplished this year.

This one is called Desert Ridge Trail, and it is a fairly large quilt that I am going to be teaching at The Quilt Works in Albuquerque as a block of the month quilt.


Grandmother's Stars is a great quilt to use the 1930's reproduction fabrics on. I am also teaching this for a class, and the students have also used Christmas fabrics, Oriental fabrics, red white and blue, and rainbow colors. Anything goes!



Samba is a fun quilt, designed with the rhythym of the Samba dance in mind. I bet you all don't know that I used to do Ballroom Dancing? Even won some competitions!



And this is Oso Grande, spanish for Big Bear, because the Bear Paw blocks are very large. This is an easy and quick quilt, and can be made lap size, queen or king size.

I've got lots of other ideas up my sleeve for 2008, and my motto this year is "Create in 2008"!

Happy New Year!

Painted Batting

I have been experimenting with painting quilt batting. It is an idea that I have been tossing around after painting on dryer sheets and paper towels, and the recent article in Quilting Arts Magazine gave me the push I needed to start. I am a longarm quilter and I have oodles of batting scraps laying around that I cannot bear to throw away, and I have been using it to make fabric postcards, but have not made a dent it them!

These two experiments use diluted acrylic craft paint, that I slopped on with a foam brush. The orange set are less diluted than the greenish set. The wider pieces are Warm and Natural, and the skinnier pieces are Quilter's Dream Select Cotton. The QD paints more uniformly, the scrim on the W&N seems to interfere with the absorbtion of the paint, and leaves a texture, though I'm sure that feature could be used to an advantage. In this cold weather, they are taking a LONG time to dry, but are very quick to paint.

I am planning on incorporating them into my art quilts. The nice thing about batting is that it doesn't fray, it has dimension and body, and would create a lovely texture as a top element, and is easy to hand stitch through as well as machine stitch. Try it and show me what you've done!

Abstract African Fabric Postcards

More postcards--surprize! These are a set that I make for the Abstract Fabric Postcard swap that I hosted on my Latest Trends in Mixed Media group. I made my second set with African inspired fabrics and embellishments.

Doodling Designs Class

I am taking an online class at www.joggles.com called Doodling Designs with teacher Susan Sorrell. I am way behind on lessons, but these are some doodles and the project for the first lesson. I am not much of a "doodler", I feel like I am trying to hard to "draw" instead of just let the flow of the doodle come. Too much of a control freak probably! I am anxious to go through the next lessons, it just might take me some time. Stay tuned....

Auction Quilt

I have been working on a quilt for the major fundraiser for my daughter's school. Two other moms and I pieced the blocks, and I quilted it on my longarm machine. The auction is tonight, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will raise a lot of money for the school! We are very happy with it. Now I want to make one for myself!

Blog Neglect

Oh, I have been neglecting my blog! I have been busy with several projects, and will post pics soon, but meanwhile here are a couple of postcards that I have recently made.

The first is a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) card that I did just for fun with this cool fabric (Alexander Henry?) that I got on Shop Hop last year. I used a silk flower that was recycled from a broken lai that my daughter had.

The second postcard is a challenge piece that I did for the Habiliments yahoo group. The theme was "My Home is my Nest", and so this depicts my home in New Mexico, using the rich colors of the Southwest. The bird is a bead taken from an old clay necklace, and I wrapped some vine twigs from our yard with one of my favorite fibers to make the nest.

More pics coming soon, I promise!