Saturday, December 12, 2009

Pink Refractions




Pink Refractions, the quilt that wasn't sure it wanted to be made! I had the desire to explore pink using prequilted and painted fabrics from the beginning of the challenge. Somehow important to dos kept popping up and delaying me from starting. That's fine, we had an extra 12 days this challenge. Then I had several custom orders for cards, notebooks, a journal and a mini quilt at the beginning of December. Not to mention field trips, concerts and office parties. Finally, early this week, the time came to get work. And what happened next, the sewing machine started acting up while free motion quilting. The thread was shredding and it was making a clunking sound. Not good, but I did my best to keep my frustrations at bay and kept going. I didn't have time to take it in for service. I made it through the quilting, painted the fabric, cut the strips and went to sew them together. The feed dogs didn't advance the fabric. No forward motion. The machine was down. Thankfully, we gave my daughter a little Brother from Costco for her birthday last month. Annaliese gracefully let me borrow her machine, "as long as you don't break it Mom!" I was able to finish shortly after dinner last night. Next challenge, I'll start earlier -- I promise!?


Despite all the headaches and tears, I like how the quilt turned out. I'm one of the few Twelves that likes pink. I have pink clothes and touches of pink in my decorating. Plus, three young girls, although they are now starting to outgrow the intense pink desire. I'm even planning on decorating for Christmas with pink and green. I love how the quilt dances and glows with the different shades of pink. The texture of the quilting further splits the light and adds to the appeal. Now that I have a bunch of pink painted and quilted fabric, I plan on further exploring the theme. In all of my free time of course.

8 comments:

Diane Perin said...

Nikki, it sounds like your experience was a Challenge in the worst sense of the word! Hope your machine is fixed easily!

The colors and textures in this are so amazing. It's striking on screen but I have the feeling that I'd want to look at this for a long time in person. Wonderful!

Gerrie said...

I love grids and this one is fabulous. For a last minute production, it is super. Be sure to click on this to enlarge it to see all of the detail.

Terri Stegmiller said...

I guessed this to be your quilt, Nikki, before I got to the bottom of the post. It so looks like you! Love it! I laughed when you were told not to break your daughter's machine. Too funny! I'm glad you got it finished in time.

Terry Grant said...

Love this! It glows. It almost appears to have light coming through it like a stained glass window. wonderful.

kirsten said...

Oh, Nikki, you and I were Soul Sisters on this project! I laughed reading the first line of your post becasue I hadn't read any of the others when I wrote mine! And, yes, I love pink and have pink clothes, too. Your quilt almost looks like velvet in places. It's amazing! And the edging is lovely.

Kristin L said...

This technique really suits you. You do a wonderful job of mixing all the right hues and shades and various textures to make a monochrome quilt really sing. I'd love to see all your single color quilts with painted fabric displayed together in all the colors of teh rainbow. I imagine it would be wonderful.

Françoise said...

This is one of my favourites! You did really well despite your sewing machine crisis.
And what a good idea you had to give a machine to your daughter for her birthday!

Karen said...

I agree with Terry, this looks like a stained glass window to me, the colors are really vibrant!