Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Starting a New Quilt

I have so many quilts in progress already.  But after taking the Ginny Eckley class on fabric painting and thread painting, I was itching to start this project.  I took this photo in Europe last year.  One of my memories of the trip was the geraniums.  Every home, every business, every bridge had window boxes full of red and pink geraniums, all in full bloom.  I noticed as we walked across one bridge over a canal that the window boxes there had a watering system with little tubes running up from the canal water.

I adored this row of blue pots on a wall.  It's one of my favorite photos from the trip.  It has been whispering to me for the last year, asking me to make a quilt from it. 
I started by painting a blue sky.  I found it's harder to paint a BIG piece of fabric.  This piece is about 40 inches by 50 inches.  I did the painting on my deck in the hot sun.
After a few layers of paint, letting it dry in between, I roughly pleated it and brushed paint along the peaks, trying to get a horizontal striated effect.
Next, I used a different piece of fabric to start painting the wall.  I have the photo handy for reference.
After 3 days of painting layer after layer, this is what I have so far.  I like the wall better than the sky, but most of the sky will be covered by the plants anyway.  At this point, the wall fabric is simply lying across the sky fabric.  I'm going to make the pots individually, and then I'll put it all together, adding the greenery and flowers as the last step.

1 comment:

SEWButterfly said...

It looks wonderful, Julia! Can't wait to see more!