Betty Busby art quilts

These are fun to make

Making an art quilt

This is fun

Latest inspiration

I have this thing about skinny lines on a background; I especially like them if they are not straight.   Look at this quilt by Lisa Call.  I love the skinny lines and the colors.  I found images of this quilt oriented both ways but I like it this way.

Lisa Call

I think Lisa's strips are painted (her strips are pieced, EEK!) but mine will be fabric.  I made some skinny strips with my 1/4 inch tape maker.  When the strips are that skinny they don't have to be on the bias to be shaped.  Today I will pick out some fabrics for the background from my Vicki Welsh hand dyed fabrics.  Her fabrics are so beautiful.  I am going to start with purples, greens and oranges.  I plan to big stitch quilt it (perle cotton size 8).  That's as far as my plans go and I am likely to veer off in some direction that takes my fancy.

Sounds like fun to me.  We are having a series of rain storms for the next several days.  I need something fun to distract me because I'd like to be outside.

Eye Candy

Margo Duke

Inspiration

This is the work of Beth Aten.  I love the colors and the stitching.

Source

source

Color and lines 2 & 3

I am still here happily playing with my fabrics.  I am so in love with the colors.  I just like looking at them.

Color and lines 3

Color and lines 2 and 3

Color and lines 2

I added some thread lines.  I sewed it here and there, sometimes I tied it.

And now it looks like this and I am happy with it.

Riot of color

My workroom is a riot of color right now.

I did a little more on my green lime stack quilt.

You can see where I pinned the new pieces on.  I still need to fuse them in place.

Here is how it looked before.

I started another strip quilt.  This one is quite small.  I drew lines on the photo.  I want them to be stitching lines but I am still working on how to actually stitch them.  I think the piece is too fragile for machine work.  Maybe I will try couching.

Here is how it looks without the proposed lines.

Is it done yet?

I am still loving this fun piece I've been making.  It's all about the interplay of colors, how they affect each other and how I like it.  I am happiest when I don't try to figure it all out ahead of time.  I like putting pieces together and adding bits.  Since this piece has no function except to look at it, there's no need to make it sturdy or washable.  There's just adding lines and colors as I see fit.

I did extend it a bit, added some stitching and I fused it to batting.  The batting is pinned to a piece of foam core stuff (they sell it as insulation at Home Depot).  I like it on the off white background of the batting but can I accept batting showing?  And do I want to mount it on the foam core?  Most importantly, it makes me want to make another one.

Here it is, propped up against my design wall.  The fabrics include hand dyed pieces from Vicki Welsh, Laura Wasilowski, Frieda Anderson and me along with some commercial pieces from Island Batik.  The pieces from Frieda are silk and they shimmer but that is not so obvious in my photos.

And here is a detail that shows some of the stitching.

I hung it in the bathroom for now.

Lit from within

I love this piece by Melody Johnson.  I like the skinny lines and the dots and  the colors and, most of all, I love how it looks lit from within.  I found a blog entry from around the time she made this piece.  She had been feeling stuck and making these little quilts gave her a sense of fun and freedom, which is what you need to be unstuck.  She writes about it beautifully here.

I am crazy for things that look lit from within, which is different than just light and dark.

Colorwash quilts have a lit from within look, too.  Wanda from Exuberant Color does an amazing job making that happen in her color wash quilts (and in other types, too).  Here is a type she calls confetti (because it is made from small scraps).

How to make an okay art quilt stunning

Melody Johnson makes wonderful art quilts and she also is very generous about sharing her techniques.  Recently she made an art quilt that didn't come out as well as she would have liked so she fixed it.  Here are the before and after photos.    And here you can read what she said about the fixing.

After she fixed it...

Before she fixed it

It's quite an amazing transformation and very nice of her to share the before as well as the after.

For my birthday

I commissioned an art quilt from Melody Johnson, who does amazing things with color using her hand dyed fabrics and a great sense of design.  My quilt is ready!  First she had me give her a little input about what I wanted.  She posted  about the finished quilt and sent me photos.

I am thrilled with the quilt and can't wait to see it in person and find an honored spot for it to hang.

Beautiful Fabric

I got some really beautiful hand dyed silk from Frieda Anderson.  The colors are so wonderful.  I used the fabric to start this.  The photo doesn't begin to show how rich the colors really are.

So much more fun than a quilt for the bed

I am inspired by the way Melody Johnson and Gerrie Congdon use color.  I made this little quilt with their work in mind.

It's not finished.  It may never be finished.  It's an exercise in working with color and its purpose is to experiment and have fun.  I no longer feel a need to finish things unless I really like them.  I'd rather set something aside unfinished than finish something I don't really like.

Art Quilts

This is from Melody Johnson's quilt series she calls Treehouses.  This post has a wonderful explanation of her design process for the next quilt in the series.

Art Quilt by Melody Johnson

Melody Johnson makes wonderful colorful art quilts.  I love her wild and wonderful use of  COLOR.  She is an inspiration to me.  Her blog has lots of information as well as eye candy.

Art Quilt

This art quilt is by Ann Fahl

I love this close up

Great art quilt

Gerrie Congdon did a 3x3  composition every day for a year; I think they are all made from fabric. You can see a lot of them here.  

I am crazy about this one. Gerrie blogged about the process, and about making this particular piece here, where she writes: 

 "This base of this is red silk organza with black misty fuse over red felt. The strips of fabric are silk with a black spatter design – not sure if it was dye or paint. The dots are black silk."

Beautiful Art Quilt

This quilt is by Jan Myers-Newbury .  It's all hand dyed and she uses Shibori to get some of the color effects.  She calls it Homage to Albers for Josef Albers, who is famous for his work with color.  He has a great book showing the effect one color can have on another.

Homage to Albers

Beautiful Art Quilt

by Diane Perin Hock