"Crocus" finish plus all the colors from this week!

 

Welcome to the creative round up for the week! Above is a painting I made from a lesson by Tamara LaPorte! I love elephants who are wonderful parents and great friends. 

Here are two more paintings done from her recent workshop of teachers

I read this somewhere this week...as a painter we have one job, cover things in paint. I heard this when watching a video about the impressionists... and love it. No pressure, enjoy color and watching it dry...

I learn from each painting, about color, shading, line and shape. When I start from an image, I try to see what is there not what my mind thinks is there... I change it but want to capture an essence

As to sewing this week... well... let me start with the color of the month, purple scraps at RSC and my twinkler block...

pattern at superscrappy

the colors so far

and what was left when I cut out a lot of scrappy circles for an upcoming project...

Several projects kept me busy but I'll show those later when they are further along... the big finish is 

"Crocus"

"Crocus" about 16" tall by 38" long/wide

How I love it... I started with the bottom row... tiny strips becoming leaves and grasses...

Note: little shell buttons like flowers of spring

I get lost in the organic beauty that each improvisational addition makes... until I get enough to put into a strip of grass... then added another row more like stems...I'll show lots of close ups so you can see how fun the quilting came out... a mix of walking foot and free motion, a mix of cotton threads and sparkly delicate metallic threads.

after the row of stems comes the flower heads emerging in Spring. These curvy shapes were left from a project years ago, the flowering 9 patch blocks.... nothing goes to waste, it goes into the parts dept. 

I love the process of adding more. I'm still adding beads by hand to catch the eye on those blossoms.

As I added bits, and pieced the puzzle together, I imagined the quilting lines... and it goes amazingly fast once I start. Or I just lose track of time... "another little line here"  "this needs a bit of gold thread"

"I think I'll lay a strip of yellow green here and raw edged applique it to the strip" Following my heart, my intuition, listening to audio books, periodically looking out the window at the scrap of a mountain view in the distance, acknowledging the hail as it hits a window, petting Milo who keeps a poodle eye on me as I work.

 It creates a diversion like no other, the blessing of having a tiny workspace of my own in an upstairs bedroom.

Like I said, the shell button flowers are a start to the beading... all put on by hand after the quilt is finished. 

This represents a few months of work... like a puzzle, piece is sewn to piece, row to row, quilting lines added, hundreds of choices made along the way. 

I usually do 2-3 posts a week, in case you're new here... and each one seems to include art... that's my life at the moment!

Now I hope to hang the latest quilt over the mantel for a while... and need to tend to the growing pots of wildflowers on the back porch

linking to a few parties: 

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

patchwork Sunday                    

oh Scrap Sundays

 slow stitching Sundays

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays 

http://www.inquiringquilter.com/ Wednesday wait loss

Midweek makers wednesdays  

http://www.myquiltinfatuation.com/ 

off the wall Fridays 

tgiffriday 

finished or not

art for fun Friday