Zendoodle Quilt Update

Well, I had a meeting with the women who will be helping me with this quilt and we agreed that this is a nice contemporary design but perhaps a bit of a challenge because it is not a traditional design.
We spent some time together teaching and learning how to piece the blocks together using freezer paper patterns. We practiced putting a block together and it turned out pretty decent. So each woman has a package with a pattern and some fabric which they took home with instructions to make 8 small 4.5" x 4.5" blocks which we'll put together to make 2 8.5" X 8.5" blocks. When we meet again with our small blocks we'll decide how we want to sew them together because there are a number of different designs you can get depending on how you position them. You can see that below and in my blog of 3 weeks ago.

This is the selection of fabric we'll be using for our Zendoodle Quilt



Below are four 8.5" X 8.5" completed blocks.

 

 

 

Day's End and New Life

I've been waiting for my sunset painting to be delivered to it's owners before I posted it here on my blog. Below is the final painting.

I love to celebrate new life. It is such a precious gift. I do that by drawing baby portraits with graphite on paper. Here is the latest.

I was cleaning out my garden this past week and the rose bush on the south side of my house was still blooming so I clipped off the last roses and put them in a vase in the house. Before they disappeared for another long winter, I sat down and sketched them.

Hola! Blogging from Mexico.

This week I am blogging from Mexico and as you know, I always take a small sketchbook, some pencils, some watercolour pencils and a few paintbrushes with me when on vacation. Due to the fact that I didn't bring a novel along to read, I've been doing some sketching.

Also, I usually blog on Thursdays and today is Wednesday. Wow, how relaxed am I to even get out of my routine! Actually, today we had some rain and so I decided to blog now rather than tomorrow when, if the weather is good, we'll be golfing first thing and hitting the beach in the afternoon.

We are really enjoying ourselves, however they've had an unusual amount of rain here this month and the courses are flooded making for challenging conditions. We've seen so much wildlife on the course too. We've seen gators on the course as well as animal called a coati, turkey vultures, grey fox, cranes, flamingo-looking birds that weren't pink but grey, iguana and lizards. Really interesting!

Below are the sketches so far. Enjoy!

Zendoodling and Quilt Design

I have been zendoodling again. Not because I needed to de-stress myself but because I am trying to come up with a quilt design. Our local Christian School is planning a Silent Auction as a fundraiser early next year and along with some friends, I'd like to construct a quilt to place in it.

As you know, I'm not really a traditional quilter. I prefer more contemporary styles of quilts and I don't often make a quilt to adorn a bed. My quilts are designed as art that can be hung on the wall. I'm not sure yet what this quilt will be but I'd like to do something in black, white and gray. And so because zentangles are also mostly done in black, white and gray, I decided to try to come up with a square adorned with zentangles.

I drew a 4" x 4" square in my sketchbook and divided it like I divide my landscape quilt patterns. In each space, I did a different zendoodle. While I doodled I consciously tried to keep my darkest darks in one corner and my lightest lights in another. This will enhance the overall design of the quilt when the blocks are put together.

Once the block was filled with zendoodles, I photographed it and brought the photo up in my computer. I don't have a fancy photo editing software but I've found that I can do a lot in Microsoft Word. I imported the photo into my Word program and copied it so I had two. Then I rotated the second photo 1/4 around. I copied the original photo again and rotated the third copy 1/2 the way around and then I copied the original again and rotated the fourth copy 3/4 the way around. When I had the four squares oriented the way I wanted them, I put them together to make a large square out of them. I was really impressed with the result.

This is the original zendoodle block.





The above blocks are a combination of four of the original block with the three copies rotated. I gives me the feeling of a kaleidoscope.

I was able to get four different designs from this one block using the rotation method however, I was sure I could get many more designs from this square by manipulating it in different ways. Next I tried designing by flipping the photo of the original block so it showed up backwards and upside down. Below are the designs I got with that method.

 

As you can see these 4 examples look completely different than the first 4 examples.

I am sure there are many other design possibilities with this same original block and I think I will continue to find as many as I can. Then we'll have to decide which method we want to use for the quilt project and what type of art we want to make. There's the possibility we go a completely different direction but if we do end up using this design in some way, I'll post the final project here on the blog.

 

This experiment has also inspired me to try it with coloured fabric. Oh so many projects in my brain! I can't wait to get started!