12 x Mini Radiance

Today I made the most of the sunshine and dyed twelve mini Radiance works. They are each designed to be six inch square finished (after hand stitching) and to be standalone works but I quite like the composite effect:

Twelve - streets ahead

I am going well with ideas this time. I know what I am doing and have been on the prowl with my camera for essential ingredients. What is my quilt about this time? Well. see if you can work it out. Here is my first clue ( such as it is , tee hee!)

Twelve Frogs

According to Sydney mathematician Clio Cresswell, singles can increase their chances of finding true love by rejecting at least 12 potential partners before settling down. Here is the complete article Mathematician's Formula for Love.

She says that mathematics can be fun but have you kissed twelve frogs?

What's up with the number Twelve?

• 12 tribes of Israel
• 12 hours in the day; 12 hours in the night; 12 hours on a clock
  
• 12 apostles
  
• 12 signs of the zodiac
  
• 12 months of the year
• 12 jurors on a jury
  
• 12 days of christmas
• There are 12 function keys on a computer keyboard f1-f12
• There are 12 digits on a telephone keypad 0-9 plus # and *
• There are 12 total notes in an octave c,c#,d,d#,e,f,f#,g,g#,a,a#,b
• There 12 grades in elementary and high school

And that's only scratching the surface. There's a quilt in there somewhere...

A Celebration of Passion

I'm sure all our readers will join the Twelves in sending hugs and very best wishes to Kirsten as she celebrates the opening day of her new Pompom Rouge Craft Studio and Shop at:

605 Flinders Street West, Townsville
Queensland 4810, Australia
Phone/Fax + 64 7 4724 2268
admin(at)pompomrouge(dot)com

So if you are ever in Far North Queensland, a very beautiful part of the world, be sure to pop into Pompom Rouge.

PS: This piece is called "Irrepressible. I made it for the "Passion" theme, which was set by Kirsten. It has a very festive, celebratory air.

Twelve Colour Wheel

If this warm winter keeps up, I may do some dyeing this week. Then again, look what I found in my hand dye stash:

Little Twelvetoes

We've had a Schoolhouse Rock renaissance at my house in recent years so it's no surprise this one came to mind given our 12 challenge.



I still don't quite get the base 12 math, but I'm fine with the multiplication tables.

Twelve Part Colour Melody

No brilliant "Twelve" ideas have manifested yet but it occurs to me that a basic primary, secondary, tertiary colour wheel is made up of 12 hues.

I can feel another dyeing session coming on...

A Passionate Update

After the excitement of the 1st of the month "reveal", I always enjoy updating the Twelve by Twelve website and compiling the theme mosaics that display our quilts together. It's also interesting to see the development of the artist gallery pages for each individual "Twelve" especially now that eleven out of twelve of the mosaic spaces have been filled in. Here is the Passion mosaic along with a mosaic showing Karen's eleven contributions so far:

Click on the mosaics to take you through to the Twelve by Twelve website. And if you notice a broken link or typo, please e-mail me and let me know.

The twelfth theme

I have had so long to think about what this final theme of the original 12 might be, that I overthought. I felt it had to be something that would be the perfect conclusion, the final summation, the theme that would somehow tie everything up into a tidy package! I do know, of course, that this is not the end, but it is the completion of our 12 by 12 by 12 planned project.

One night last week, as I was trying to fall asleep, it came to me. The simple, and it seemed to me, perfect, answer. And so, I present to you our twelfth theme—"Twelve." A magical number, indeed, just think of all the times that 12 is the number.

Have fun—the possiblities are endless!

Passion and colours

Having too many ideas about this burning theme, I did some brainstorming with pen and paper. The words that kept coming again and again were those associated with hot colours. After all, if I'm a quilter, it's mostly because I like to play with colours so much.

I decided to take lots of pictures of colourful flowers in my garden, and then started to dye fabrics trying to achieve the colours I liked most in these pictures.

I also printed one of the pictures on white cotton, and I included two small pieces of the picture in my quilt.

The left side of the quilt is a piece of bright orange fabric I liked a lot and I didn't want to cut up. The right side is the logical follow-up of a few scrap quilts I made these last months.

This was really a fun theme to explore. Thanks Kirsten!

There will be more pictures on my blog in a few days.

Crime of Passion

I did not have an easy time with this challenge topic! And I have to confess that as I puzzled over what I would do, I was somewhat affected by the musings on this blog. I rejected passion flower and passion fruit as likely to duplicate someone else's effort -- and anyway, they just didn't thrill me. I rejected all sorts of ideas, until at some point the phrase "crime of passion" occurred to me. And maybe it's the lawyer in me (not that I'm into crimes, let alone crimes of passion!), and maybe it's that I adore mystery novels, but that's the one I knew I wanted to try to illustrate.

Ultimately, I decided to give this a double meaning. As those of you who read my blog or know me in "real life" know, I'm passionate about reading. I can talk books and browse bookstores and read for ages and ages and ages. Because of that, it seemed especially appropriate to make my piece a book cover of a mystery thriller about a crime of passion!

I could picture it in my mind, but oh, getting it translated into fabric! (Isn't that always the way?) I snapped photos of paperback books until I found a position and composition I liked. But then, how to create the cover? I tried various methods -- hand drawing letters and a bloody illustration .... the effort was fun but the result was just not what I wanted. Finally, I realized that I could set it up with Photoshop, and that's the method I followed.

As a side benefit in all of this, I have now learned how to create a curved-line path and place type on it in Photoshop! I wanted the book cover's text to curve to show a bent paperback cover. I tell you, just the type part took a full day. (And only at the end did it occur to me that I should have called my brother, a graphic designer and Photoshop expert, to just do it for me... duh.) Ah well, I was satisfied with the result. The bloody knife is adapted from a photo of a halloween decoration!!

Once I had my cover, I fused it down and then machine quilted it. You probably can't see it too well in this photo, but on the black background I tried to machine quilt fingerprint-like shapes. You know, crime evidence! You can click on both photos to see a larger, detailed view.

Here's a detail shot:



All in all, I was happy with the result and I feel like this really does illustrate one of my passions!

Hot hot hot

Two of my many passions are travel and art. My number one place I want to visit is India and hopefully we will be able to go in the next few years. I started this piece with that in mind and this is what I came up with. I soon realized that it will be shown directly below my rocking chair piece in the mosaic which is similair in color. I went back to the drawing board and made another piece using cool colors which did nothing for me, so I decided to use this piece and hope it does not look to weird in the mosaic. One of my other passions is art and I realized this piece looked a lot like something Hundertwasser would do, so I was pleased to be able to combine these two favorites. This piece is made using a method from the C June Barnes book "Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art" involving wool batting, stitching, then dyeing.

Passion Interupted

Passion, how I would love to be lost in my passions! But for now that longing is more of a dream. The nagging demands of everyday life keep interrupting. (As I'm trying to write this I've had to stop to take over cooking the pancakes someone else started.) Honestly, rarely do I feel truly passionate, all consumed, on fire. My introverted nature tends towards self reflection, not passionate expression. And maybe my passions are quiet because I live in a house filled with passion. With four kids, the oldest approaching puberty, and an adoring, adventurous husband, passions are always running high. As mom, I'm easily distracted by the need to tend their passions. The urgency of their passions often outweighs the importance of mine.

For my quilt, I used a fiery background of pinks, oranges and yellows contrasted with the cool purples, blues and greens of interruption. The background is pieced with various commercial fabrics and then overlayed with hand dyed organza, symbolizing how my passions are somewhat veiled at this time. I quilted it with metallic swirls for all the ideas and passions swirling around within me. I then added wire springs for the bits of passion that find their way out. The cross pieces are paint rag fabric in my favorite purples and greens. They are quilted with variegated thread for the various, changing passions of others and outlined with a heavy beaded line for the strength of their demands.

Despite my occasional frustration, I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and my time of interupted passion is only for a season. For now, I will embrace my family and role as mom with passion and sneak in time for myself when I can.

Satin Sheets

As I pondered passion, several different interpretations came to mind. In the end, I decided to go with a more titillating, tongue in cheek view. I cut strips of silk charmeuse which I wove into a pattern on a white silk background. I machine quilted with sensuous curves. I see the silk strips as representing a perfectly made bed.

I used red silk painted fabric to make rose petals. I fused two pieces together. I created three dimensional petal shapes from the fused silk. They were sewn to the background with a small bead. Here is a closeup


So, there you have it, satin sheets and rose petals, ready for a night of passion. You can see more details on my blog.