Color transition & AAQ auction

This was to have been my entry in the Alliance for American Quilts contest. The theme was "From Old to New" I chose from the fan of my grandmother's day to the cell phone of my granddaughter's. All it needs is backing and a border... I really needed another week to finish and was so disappointed I didn't.. Especially now that I'm watching the quilts are being auctioned off on e-bay as a fundraiser....next year for sure. The theme for next year will be announced soon.. You should follow along with the auction.. there are several quilts I'll bid on in weeks three and four.

I really picked a too ambitious plan for the time I had and I often do that. I keep wanting to do sixteen squares for the suffragette quilt to use more photos but KNOW that I would get bogged down and struggle to finish... So nine squares is realistic and doable. The hard part will be narrowing the choice of photos...

But I did do a color transition on the block when I pieced it to emphasize from old to new.. I want to do something similar with the suffragette quilt but more black to sepia. This time I want the the lighter area to be in the center block of the quilt. As it happens a small thrift store is quite close to where mom's friend is a patient and when I dropped her off to visit him today I went over and found six or seven great fancy blouses to cut up.


Again I went to photoshop to play with the effect and visually "cut" small squares from the above image and moved them around to get the effect I wanted.. except my center will be more sepia than yellow....

And now Hideko's block

I've been pondering this block for several days now.. The colors are subdued and the image is very delicate.. It has a very winter look and feel to me.. very simple and elegant...

Hideko included about 6 pages full of lots of images from one of her favorite artists... There were recurrent themes.... hearts, swirls, roses, birds, candles and one butterfly..

I laid out all the blocks on the tables and tried to find what I wanted to do to my block that was different from the previous stitchers but still in harmony with the other stitchers.. All had included some heart imagery and all had lots of swirls and vines... All had used beads and some used lace.. Cathy's was my favorite with the bird in the cage...

I had wanted to use a bird to finish this RR but it wasn't going to work... although a gray heron on the gray velvet would have been spectacular.... but a bird of any size would compete with the rose which going to be the focal point of my block.. Also there is a very intense red patch and the background of the image is a rosy pink and there is a delicate pink in some of the fabric. I did dye some lace and to match the background it was 3 parts watermelon to 1 part pebble.... I just LOVE the names of the Adirondack inks...

I finally decided to work from this image of a rose and a butterfly... (see upper left on above page) My second choice would have been the vase of flowers on the lower right. I will still also include swirls, hearts and maybe some lace... I reversed the image so it will frame the young woman. Instead of one butterfly below the rose I'm thinking I will use 2 or 3 smaller ones and a larger butterfly on the gray velvet.... At this point I'm thinking of lots of bullion roses on climbing vines.

As usual things will change as I go along but at least I have a direction... I'm going in to stay with my mom tonite and not sure when or how often I will be home for a while....no computer... but don't that stop you from leaving comments... we all love comments...