Blogger’s Quilt Festival: Giverny Flowers #1

Amy's Creative SideHooray, it’s Blogger’s Quilt Festival Time! It’s a quilt festival for those of us that don’t get to go to Quilt Market and/or Quilt Festival.

We all put a link to a post about our quilt on Amy’s blog  and visit the posts throughout the week.

My favorite aspect of this festival is the story that goes along with the quilt, I always try to feature a quilt that is important to me in some way.

This year, I want to feature a quilt I made this summer: Giverny Flowers #1

 

  • Quilt Measurements: 28″ x 38″
  • Special Techniques used, if any: Improvisational pieceing, Free Motion Machine Sketching
  • Quilted by: ME!
  • Best category: Art Quilt

I’ve been doing free motion machine sketched botanical motifs for a few years now. Taking a leaf or flower and extracting the essence of it into a few lines gives me endless pleasure. But until this quilt, I’ve not really been choosing motifs for any particular reason other than I like the shape of the plant.

This summer, I was playing around with faux snow dyeing, and one of those pieces of fabric reminded my of Monet’s Water Lily paintings. I faux snow dyed a lot more of both the multicolor  fabrics as well as greens, golds and purples and improvisationally pieced the top. And then, instead of stitching any old flower in each shape, I used the main flowers from Monet’s garden!

Iris:

Water Lily:

and my favorite, Wisteria:

Choosing flowers that have a reason to be together has opened a whole new direction for me. Although I don’t get to make my art at a fast rate, I’ve got so many responsibilities pulling me in many directions, I’ve got a lot of ideas of how to expand on this concept – I am really excited by this new direction!

Rest asssured, I’ll be sharing where this takes me right here on the blog! If you’re new here, why not subscribe to my posts or sign up for my monthly newsletter? There’s a form to do so in the upper right hand corner of my sidebar.

27 Responses

  2. Oh my goodness!! Your interpretation of one of my favorite painter’s work is so inspiring. I just have to try something like this. Thanks so much for sharing and have a great day!

  3. It’s so beautiful and unique. When I started quilting it was right after I finished my MS degree/project on a rare plant. At that time I thought it would be so cool to do a quilt with a bunch of the plants that lived around the plant I studied… I didn’t have the skills to do it then but this sketching method might be a good way to actually accomplish it. Years later. 🙂

  5. Oh, wow! Your quilting is amazing.

    I’ve only just learned about snow-dying a week or so ago and have seen such amazing fabrics come out of it…

  10. Monet is one of my favorite artist for so many reasons. I think you conveyed the feel of his garden in Giverny so well. Your quilting is wonderful and your dyeing is fantastic. Great job expressing your vision! 🙂

  14. Wow, what a fabulous way to show off your fabulous snow dyes. I went crazy with them last year, and can’t bear to cut them up they are so pretty. Who would have thought that snow dyeing would give such incredible results. I have often refered to them as Monet looking fabrics myself!

  21. What an amazing work of art. Love the pattern, the colors, the fabric, the thread sketching (simple, but elegant), and the quilting. Well done.

  24. I really love your quilt. The colors are beautiful and definitely give the watercolor effect. I love that it is unique and uses different techniques in a way you don’t often see. Beautiful job!

  26. Beautiful! Love your fabrics (great dyeing!) and your free-hand flowers are just amazing! And what a neat concept too, to use Monet’s garden for your inspiration.