Sunflower Photo Quilt Revision

A couple weeks ago I wrote about wanting to redesign a quilt that had been on my design wall for quite some time. I posted a picture of  a photo taken of one of my gigantic sunflowers,  which I printed on cotton fabric and organza and pinned over the section of the quilt I didn't care for anymore. This week I made the change permanent by ripping out some seams and freed the balance of the quilt, which I still liked. I also flipped around the organza photo piece so it was the mirror image of the photo, which gave it some nice transparency layers as you can see in the closeup below.  The blue lines you see on the outer edges of the sunflowers are where I'm planning on machine quilting.

Next I added new strips to both sides of the layered photo and pieced it all back together again.   I also did some machine quilting in the center of the flower.  

Below is the original photo taken last September of my 7 foot tall sunflower, with a diameter as large as a dinner plate.  

Ethnic Ceramic Masks

Today I am finally making the transition to wearing regular shoes and am going to be able to start driving myself around again.  YEAH!!  No more surgical boot.  However, that boot was really protective of my recovering foot.  I feel a bit naked without it.

I've been way too busy with getting caught up with teaching my middle schoolers and  firing   all their projects around the clock to get to any quilting this week.  So I hope you enjoy the pictures of my students' masks and will be inspired by them.

Sunflower Quilt with Photo and Organza Overlay

During my foot surgery recovery, I've been looking a lot at two quilts on my design board that I knew needed something different.  Last week I talked about rearranging one of them and am really excited about the direction  that one is now going.

Yesterday, I played around with making changes to the other one.  I covered up the previous focal  point, which was a screen print of flowers, on which I did a lot of machine quilting (oh well) and replaced it with a photo of one of my  gigantic sunflowers that I grew this summer.  On top of that I placed an organza version of the same photo.  So if it looks a little distorted, it's due to the organza being slightly shifted on top of the opaque photo and seeing the other photo below.  I think it  just makes it a little more interesting.  I had read about this technique a long time ago in a Quilting Arts magazine.  For more information on this technique check out Wen Redmond http://wenredmond.weebly.com/holographic-images.html.

Here's a closeup of the two photos overlapped.

New Quilt from Old Quilt

I was so excited last week about getting my stitches out of my foot and thinking I'd be wearing regular shoes and driving by now.  Well, it didn't turn out that way.  I had not healed as much as the doctor had hoped.  So I'm still in the boot, but did get permission to return to work, so will be back teaching Monday.  My sweet hubby is still "driving Miss Jeannie" so we will see how it goes.  Next doc visit is Tuesday.  Hopefully that visit will have a better outcome.

Meanwhile, I've been struggling with what direction to take this quilt on my design wall.

I really like the drama of this whole-cloth dyed piece, made last March, but just couldn't figure out how to quilt it, and move it towards its journey to completion.  As many artists expres, it wasn't speaking to me. So after looking at it on my design wall during my recovery the last few weeks, I decided to cut it and rearrange it.  So, here is my new version of it.  To me it resembles a Martian landscape with an aurora- filled sky. 

Using yarns and water soluble stabilizer, I made the swirling oval shape shown below. I think I have a better idea of  where I want to go with it now.  Let me know what you think.