Rusty Harvest

I've made two and a half quilts for this challenge.  This one won't be ready in time but you can read the story of Rusty Harvest on my blog:

 Rusty Harvest - detail

Happy Halloween!

Thought I'd share my little patinaed skeleton to wish you all a happy Halloween/Day of the Dead. I got him in Mexico a couple years ago and love his goofy expression.

Can't wait to see what you have all done and share one of my favorite, all-time, 12 x 12 challenge pieces!

Rusty Patina Painting

Quilted and painted fabric done! Some day I will learn to not wait until the last minute, but for now I am living with the urgent to-do list. Currently it has grown to the point I would like to just hide. Fortunately, my sense of responsibility keeps me going, not to mention the fact that I really love most of the things I get to do. Clean bathrooms and kitchen no longer rank as urgent, so they are left until somebody else in the family picks up the slack. This week has been quilting and Halloween costumes, both things that make my creative heart smile.

This is what my quilt looked like on Wednesday. I really wasn't sure about the color scheme as I was painting the fabric. Nothing looked quite right and I was afraid they would look horrible together. I am happy to say that the colors surprised me! I can't wait for Monday's reveal.

Not quite finished

... but I started quilting today.

A Little Rusty

I keep thinking that I have time on this challenge, and now I realize that I don't so much. I was liking the sawtooth idea that I posted about earlier, but then took a slight rusty/ginger/strawberry/redheaded detour. Yet, as much as I can relate to redheads, I couldn't get that head wrapped around a carrot topped quilt as much as I could get into the points and textures of the first idea.



So, the next step in my process is to pull out fabrics and see what talks to me. I have lots of blue/greens and rusts!! Certainly I can make a 12 x 12 piece out of something in the pile above!




I kind of figured that I would lean towards the above hand dyes and batik fabrics since they are more "art quilt" and would take embellishment well (yes, I'm thinking some embellishment here).




But the fun, contemporary prints and spotty-ness of this selection are the ones raising their hands and shouting "use me!" They take the piece to a more whimsical place, but I like whimsical too. I'm also liking that the dots, spots, and rings of the Kaffee Fasset prints echo, in an abstract way, the grainy texture or rust. Well, they do in my mind anyway...

Rust never sleeps

Living by the ocean with salt-saturated breezes, rust and corrison is inevitable.

Odd Sources of Inspiration

I've completed my Rusty piece but, with a week or two up my sleeve, I'm exploring some other ideas. One of these ideas is tangentally related to this:

Beginning

My family and I climbed to the top of the main tower of the National Episcopal Cathedral last week. The carillon bells were pretty amazing.

There are 53 bronze bells. The smallest weighs 17 pounds and the largest weighs 24,000 pounds. Each bell has a bit of scripture cast on the surface.
I was really inspired by the patina on this bell, the colors and the word "thanksgiving."

So I began gathering fabric.
I had a surprising amount of metallic fabrics as seen in the stack in the back. I don't remember where they came from, but I'm *thankful* to find them.

On the beach

I wonder if there is any way of extracting this beautiful blue-green colour:

PS: These are Portuguese Man o' War aka bluebottles.  They have a nasty sting so I keep out of the water when they are around.