Another Del Quilt 06-16-16

 At one time I was a member of Kansas Art Quilters, which was a very active group with lots of opportunities for exhibiting member's work.  For a few years they did the quilts for the Fabri-Quilt fabric company booth at Quilt Markets.  They would send us the fabric and sometimes a theme and we would create original quilts for them.  They hung in the booth and were for sale after the event.  I don't know that any of them ever sold, I know that mine did not!  And this is probably the least of my efforts.  I determined to use all six fabrics I received; four on the front and two on the back.  I think it is a clumsy quilt - there is no "balance" to it.  That sometimes happens to me when someone else chooses the fabric.  I wasn't very good at doing custom quilts either.

The hat brim is actually loose from the back and I threaded a wire in to keep it stiff.  But the wire crinkles up and needs to be straightened whenever the quilt is handled.  And, of course, it cannot be rolled or folded.  Not a successful effort on my part.  

"Hat in a Blue Chair"  Del Thomas 2004  30"W x 28"L

Commercial cotton fabrics, cotton batting, cotton thread, polyester ribbon.

Machine pieced, machine broidery pers raw edge applique, needle turned applique, machine quilted.

 

Here is a detail of the broidery pers type raw edge machine applique.  The flowers cut from one piece of fabric are individually applied.

 

 

 

 Not much of a label - no contact, no size.
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Another Del quilt from long ago 05-04-16

"Hanging Ring"  Del Thomas 2005  24" square

Cotton Fabrics, cotton batting, cotton thread.

This was made for Fabri-Quilt's booth at Spring Market 2005. The requirements were the size and using all Fabri-Quilt fabrics. I sold it at an exhibit a few years ago.

I had never changed the bobbin when I changed the top thread, but it seemed like an interesting idea and I very much liked the way it turned out.

A detail shot.

The label.

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More on "Hat on a Blue Chair" 08-18-09

I had some interesting and useful responses to yesterday's post about Hat on a Blue Chair, so I am going to use today's post to share them. Some were sent as comments and some as direct e-mails. Since sometimes people don't comment because they don't want their name on the blog, I will not ID anyone. The responses are below. Further comments are welcome - this is a chance for me to learn how others view things. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#1 Well, it's just my opinion but the aqua chair "out shines" the beautiful green hat because it's so intense! Similar value but grabs the attention. Maybe it's because I am not a fan of aqua....Love the hat, love the chair but not the color of the chair....well, you asked for comments, so that's mine...
----------------------------------------------------------------#2 Maybe some shadow so that the hat looks as though it is actually sitting on the chair instead of floating there?
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#3 I was looking at your chair and hat quilt. I don't think it looks like it is floating at all. My impression is that the hat is fancy...I love the hat!!... That the chair is so plain..perhaps that is the culprit? Does the chair need to be fancier? I don't know...
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#4 I really like the hat on the chair. It reminds me of a hat my mother wore. It was woven straw with orange, pink, and red flowers. She wore hats well. How large is the quilt?

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#5 I was intrigued by your quilt that you don't feel "works". I thought it might be a fun challenge to open it in PhotoShop and play with it in answer to your "how would you improve it?" question. Attached are two possibilities, though these changes could not be made to the quilt at this point. So it is just for fun.What a travesty to mess with someone else's work--I feel a little guilty! But it was a fun

1. I thought the colors used for the background, chair and hat were too close in value and could be livened up, so I changed those colors, giving them more contrast. I also thought the composition would be stronger if the sides, with background color were cropped off.

2. After making the first changes, I thought the flowers you used were so starkly different in mood and tone that they didn't work very well with the simple, flat background, so I would have found a fabric with flatter, more stylized flowers to add to the hat.

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Del says... Of course, one of the limitations in making this type of quilt is that one is limited by the requirement to use only the fabrics from a certain manufacturer. I often find that sample quilts made to show the possibilities of a fabric line don't work very well. I don't remember what other fabrics were available in the 2004 line. I know that the large pink/red flowers were the only possibility for broiderie perse, so I limited myself with that first selection. I like the aqua fabric, and after making the chair I liked the white/aqua combination. However, the hat kills the chair and the chair kills the hat!! For me the "virtual" yellow/orange/red/pink flowers are MUCH more effective - those hot Mexican colors have always appealed to me and I use them frequently in my quilts. I don't care for the dark blue background, but I'm not sure what color might work better in my eyes. As I recall I had a polka dot fabric that I tried, but it distracted too much from the flowers on the hat.

I think that I will have to learn Adobe PhotoShop once I have Microsoft Publisher down pat - what fun to take a quilt that doesn't work and try to improve it as a "virtual image".

Some quilts don't work! 08-17-09

For several years the Kansas Art Quilters, of which I am a member, created small quilts for the Fabri-Quilt booth at Quilt Market. The requirement, of course is that one must use just Fabri-Quilt fabric. It was an interesting thing to do, but some quilts were less successful than others. I never quite figured out if it was the limited fabric, the concept or a lousy quilt artist! This is one that I was very enthused about, but it doesn't work. My concept was to have a very plain , flat, sort of primitive chair as a background for a fancy hat covered with flowers. And I do have both of those elements.

I have always liked pieced backgrounds, but I didn't want a lot of color, so I just pieced, cut and re-pieced the fine black and white squiggly fabric to give a little more texture.

"Hat on a Blue Chair" Del Thomas 2004 31"W x 28"L(Thanks to Christine for the reminder that I had left this line off. Del 08-17-09)

The brim of the hat is attached to the crown, but is wired on the edge and loose all around so that it can be adjusted. I tried quite a few ribbons to dangle off the edge, but this was the best I could find without distracting from the flowers.

The flowers are fused and machine appliqued in a modern version of broiderie perse. I think they work great. It is just the combo of chair and hat that bothers me.

What do you think? How would you improve it? I doubt that I will do more work on it after all these years, but one never knows when a brainstorm will lead me to revisit a quilt.

"Four Dwellings" 11-20-08

I have always gone through streaks of 'do nothing' and streaks of 'knock myself out'. And I know others that also have this experience. I don't really understand what triggers either direction. When my Depression gets worse I can go either way - who knows why. For a few years Kansas Art Quilters did a challenge every year and also made quilts for the Fabri-Quilt Fabric Co. to decorate their booths at Markets. They required that all the fabrics were of their manufacture. I usually slipped in a few little solid pieces to balance things out. Since I don't live in Kansas I would look through the Fabri-Quilt website and chose a few fabrics to create the beginning of a palette. Then the wonderful exhibit chair, Linda Frost, who received all the fabric that Fabri-Quilt donated to us would find some of those I picked, and a few to coordinate and ship them to me. Sometimes it was agony deciding on a design and executing it and other times things just fell together, like this quilt.

"Four Dwellings" 2005 Del Thomas 25" square SOLD

As I worked on assembling the pieces I realized I could use the multi-color polka dots to make people heads - so there are also four people in the quilt. To me this quilt is a combination of abstract and realism.

Here is the back - the main fabric is a very old Fabri-Quilt piece that I had in my 'Fabric Library'. Originally I used it in a baby quilt, but there was a large enough piece left to make this backing - as long as I pieced some strips into it. I like interesting backs, but under the pressure of time I sometimes slap any old thing on the back of a quilt, quilt it, bind it, and don't worry about it.