The Sea: Sea Spray

Since I live in Minnesota, no where near the coasts, I rarely get to see the sea. My favorite "sea" here is Lake Superior, and I go there as often as I can. I enjoy watching the waves crash over the basalt rocks, making them a deep gray. Lake Superior is a moody lake, particularly in November. My Sea Spray quilt is a nod to my favorite body of water. 

The finished quilt measures 16" x 20".  I started with a background fabric of grey ombre for the sky, blue for the water, and layered the clouds and rocks, freehand. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I stitched the clouds and rocks down by straight stitching along the curves and angles. 

With the clouds and rocks done, I got to work on the waves. I had added in two strips of blue faux cork fabric, thinking that would give the feeling of the light on the breakers as they rolled in. To soften the edges of the strips, I tried adding some sea foam by using a little free motion thread painting. I had never done this before, so it was a challenge to get it to look realistic. 

After that was done, I used white embroidery thread and began to add seed stitches to create the spray. That ended up being more work than I expected, with having to continue to add stitches to create the right combination of dense and loose stitches. 

Then I added binding, and it was done. I thoroughly enjoyed this challenge. It is one of my favorite quilts that I've made for this group! 

I have more information about the construction of this quilt on my blog today, if you are interested in reading a bit more about my process. 

Wendy

Inspired Challenge

It was challenging to figure out how to use my inspiration fabric, but in the end, I'm very happy with my two projects that came from the fabric given to me by Martha. However, I was so busy thinking and then working on the project, I forgot to take a photo of the inspiration piece before I cut it up. It is present in each project, so you still get to see it.

The fabric sent to me was a little piece of approximately 7" square of text fabric. I taped it to my wall and thought about it for awhile. To begin with, I decided to choose a phrase from the fabric and play with that a bit.

Here's the phrase I chose:

I'm not really sure why "twirling in circles" appealed to me, other than that it reminded me of a line from the movie, You've Got Mail. The scene where Meg Ryan (as Kathleen) talks about the photo of her as a little girl and her mother where they are twirling.

I thought I needed to add a little more challenge to that phrase, so I decided that all my fabric I used had to have circles in the design. The only fabric that had a polka dot design was the background fabric. The only non-circle fabric used was the inspiration fabric, which you can see here:

Of course, I had to use a circle design, so I decided on some curved piecing. I had been wanting to play with the new templates from Jen Carlton Bailly so this was a great project for some creative play. Here's a peek at my finished mini quilt:

This quilt measures 16.5" square. Here's a little closer peek at the circle fabrics:

I had fun with simple big stitching within the circles, around the edges, and then echoed the circles with some machine stitching in a soft gray that matched the background fabric.

I also added a little more stitching between the circles, for more twirling effect.

I used a gray Grunge for the backing fabric, and one of the circle fabrics for the binding.

I wasn't really satisfied that this little mini was an art quilt, and I still had some inspiration fabric left over, so I got the idea for something a little different.

I cut up some of the encouraging words and phrases from the text fabric, and made a little coneflower.

Using a piece of natural Essex linen for the background, I started by stitching the stem with 12 wt thread that matched the color in the inspiration fabric. I drew out the center of the coneflower and stitched it to the stem by machine, using raw edge applique. Then I glue basted the text pieces on separately, stitching each one down by machine, again using raw edge applique. I found a matching scrap of batik fabric that I used for the leaves and added those, using the same method.

I added a fun text fabric for the binding, and a piece of neutral fabric for the back. The quilting is simply straight lines with a matching thread color.

This little quilt is 8" x 20". Both of these little mini quilts will eventually end up on my mini quilt wall. I like them both for different reasons.

This was such a fun challenge. Thank you, Martha, for the fun inspiration fabric!

Wendy