Happy Halloween

Hope you're having or had a wonderful, fun Halloween!   (found a t-shirt I made many years ago and then painted on at a fun class, and a sweatshirt painted in my very far past of tole painting days .... the t-shirt has glow in the dark painted eyes!)

Itten's Harmonious Proportions

 When given the challenge of  'beginnings' for our Tangled Textiles quilt I started with brainstorming, recording ideas and sketches. I immediately thought of my beginnings in quilting, beginnings of art quilting and also beginnings in color. Below are a few shots from my sketchbook as I worked through some ideas.

Looking back now I may have preferred the finished quilts of my first sketches but I settled on the last one, partly out of time constraints but I did know I wanted to make a quilt based on black and white blocks and this was a good opportunity to do it.

Then which color or colors to add? That was quickly decided with the three primaries as this is a 'beginnings' quilt. As you see from the sketch I hadn't decided to put Itten's theory to work yet, but as I glanced at my book shelf , that old book from Color Theory class junped out at me and I immediately knew I would be using Itten's theory of Harmonious Proportions.

I took those relationship ratios and put then into a relationship among the three primaries and came up with 6 to 8 to 3. I decided I wanted my widest strip to be 2" so the blue was cut 2", red 1.75" and yellow 7/8". As I started to cut fabric for the binding it hit me that I needed to use the same relationships there.

Here are a few shots of the piece.

Thanks for visiting! To see the other Tangled Textiles quilts head over to our blog ...... that's where I'm headed now as it is reveal day!

Starting Classes This Week!

Summer's over, and I start my new teaching position this week, hand building at the JCC in Boca Raton. Classes are on Tuesday or Thursday and include open studio time. There are also wheel classes with Marilyn Wander on Mondays or Wednesdays. All levels are welcome and we both will include hand building or wheel in our classes so classes are flexible. If anyone is interested in classes send me an email or call Barbara at (561) 954-3262.

Above are some warm up mugs waiting for my next kiln load and below are the last photos taken of birds from vacation this summer. It was almost dark when I saw this owl land on a tree. I rushed out and tried taking its photo using my flash. It's not a great photo but better than I expected!

Happy October everyone!