FoQ Enjoy! Part 2

More inspiration from FoQ. Enjoy!

(Marble Art's demonstration. Awesome! Yeah, I purchased a kit.)

(Ms Deborah OHare at her booth., picture taken between heads)

FoQ Enjoy! Part 1

Without any further ado, I am giving you some of the things that caught my eye at the Festival of Quilts. I am noticing how very much I am drawn to details. More to follow tomorrow.

Enjoy!

 

 

Another day, another challenge

If you have been around here for a while, you know that I love a good challenge. In fact, I often come up with challenges for myself just because they inspire me so much. It’s rarely the finished project that is the carrot, but the process itself, figuring out how to solve a problem, make do, whatever the challenge is, it’s fun.

When Victoria posted a new challenge on the 15 minutes play blog, I was in before I had read through the whole post. It might have something to do with the need of distraction from my fear of finishing the Whatever quilt, but more likely it was the theme that drew me in. Architecture Challenge, imagine all the possibilities! You can read about the challenge here.

I have been through several ideas for inspirational pictures. The first that popped in my head was a picture I took at the Canary Islands a couple of years ago. I loved the rounded shape of the white stairs against the red.

Looking at it now, the picture itself was not as great as I remembered (are they ever?), so I moved on to my favourite architect and favourite building – Casa Batllô by Antoni Gaudi (none of the following pictures of the building are mine). On my first visit to Barcelona we only got to see the exterior, which by all means is simply amazing

 

 

but when I happened to stroll by on my second visit there years later, the building, at the time owned by an insurance company I think, was open to the public as part of the celebrations of the 150 year anniversary of Gaudi’s birth. It was the most amazing feeling walking around in the house I had read so much about about in my Gaudi books, looking at all the details everywhere. I was surprised to see all the clever and highly decorative solutions to simple things like ventilation and light shafts. I bet yours look nothing like this.

Wouldn’t it be the perfect inspiration for a quilt! I thought so, but then I remembered we are to use made fabrics in the quilt and somehow that did not work with what I had in my head. You can read more about the building here.

Having spent too much time browsing through Google Images, in the end I landed close to home, at a trade school near where we live. The building is a couple of years old and I still haven’t been inside even though I was following the building process eagerly. The façade is very modern and striking, and would fit perfectly for this challenge.

I want to use this opportunity to experiment with free-form-but-not-improvisational piecing, so as a first exercise I made a rough sketch, just catching how the light and shadows and angles create dept.

Next I did another sketch focusing more on proportions and angles.

I think I’ll use this as a blueprint. I just need to finish the Whatever quilt first, oh where, oh where did that inspiration go...

Hexie Love

Did you know you can do almost anything with simple hexagon shapes? Forget grandmother’s flower garden for a moment and try out something totally different. Borrow a star or hexagon pegboard from your young ones’ toy box and play around with different coloured Hama beads. Or even better, make it a collaborating project; those round beads will magically transform into hexagons when ironed.

You’ll be amazed what great layouts that may come out of a few minutes of play. I’m totally feeling inspired!

Next time: snowball love

Scrappy bead art

Having spent the weekend with my grandkids, I thought I would share a creative exercise we have been enjoying. You can see my last bead-y post here.

We filled a small box with Hama beads and started building a picture. Grandson did most of the work on this and I helped him finishing it as there’s quite a lot of work that goes into a piece of this size and he ran out of patience before we ran out of beads.

It’s easy in the beginning when you have loads of beads in every colour, but as you run out of them, you have to get creative. It’s very much like playing with a box of scraps where you get to decide which side looks better.

Mirror imaging changes everything.

Imagine each bead being a 1” or 2” square. Wouldn’t it be cool!

Next time: hexie bead love

Have you ever

Have you ever thought about what a brilliant design tool you have in such a simple thing as Hama beads?

The ironed side looks like little squares fused together.

Imagine each bead being a fabric square and there you go.

Small pieces of art to be.

 

Cheap design possibilities in every colour.

What a treat.

Colour inspiration

I'm home with a sick baby today. He's running a little fever, so I had to pick him up from kindergarden. I took this picture to send to his mom, and looking at it I realized that the colour combination was fabulous: bright blue, two shades of oranges, grey and a little brown.

See, inspiration is everywhere!