Art As Quilts

Above artwork chosen as inspiration

I remember back to when I worked for an interior designer up at Lake Tahoe. We'd have fabric reps from all the beautiful design houses come into our office & show us the latest releases. We'd get books & boxes full of swatches from the reps, in the hopes that we would use them on our custom projects. I loved looking at them & thinking how each could look beautiful when used in the proper space. My boss always laughed at me because I was constantly commenting on how I thought such & such a fabric would look beautiful as a dress, coat, shirt or blanket. Even though I no longer work in the design world I still feel that same way. I look at peeling paint on an old wall when I'm downtown & think....Wow! Wouldn't that make a beautiful painting? Since I started quilting last year I've often looked at art work & thought.....Wouldn't that make the most amazing quilt? This is the heart behind my latest art show Art As Quilts. I've started pinning all my favorite art onto my Art & Illustrations board on Pinterest. I went through my board & chose my 5 favorite works of art & went to town. It took me a little over a month to finish all 5 of them from start to finish. The funnest part was choosing all the fabric combinations. I wanted the fabrics to compliment each & every work of art without matching completely. Since I didn't work from patterns the piecing part was challenging but a lot of fun. I didn't measure anything & just went with the flow. None of them are perfect but did I mention I had soooo much fun making them? I was going to do a separate post on all five quilts but had a change of heart. It just made sense to put them all together.

Robert Ryman Quilt

Fox Quilt inspired by the art of Inalux

Joseph Albers Quilt

Trapeze Quilt inspired by the art of  Laverne Originals

Cecil Touchon Quilt

All fabrics used in the above quilts were purchased at Joanns Fabric, Hancock Fabric & Ben Franklin Craft.

This is the first set of quilts I plan on making that are inspired by art that I love. Look for more art inspired quilts in the upcoming year!

Gallery Pics

I worked so hard over the past month to get ready for my art show & then forgot to take photos until just today. Today I took my show down, lol, but made sure to document everything before I packed it up into my car. Sadly nothing sold so I will probably be giving these as Christmas gifts. 

I have a whole list of other illustrations I want to make into quilts & will start on them after the first of the year. I've been very blessed to get a ton of custom orders to last me through the end of February. All this hard work is paying off & my dream of staying home full time after all the kids go to school is starting to feel attainable. The goal is to have my studio built & ready to use in the next two years. I'm hoping to save for half of it this year & the other half next. 

I'm also putting together a portfolio to send off to some galleries so that I can possibly line up some shows over the next few years. Most times there is a waiting list & that is fine with me. It will give me a chance to get a better body of work together. I plan on posting pictures of the finished quilts over the next few days. In each post I'll share the art that inspired them. So excited to finally be able to post about this!

October Review

My life has been so full these past few weeks. 6 quilt tops finished, 5 of them quilted & hung in a little gallery downtown. My opening is tonight. I am so nervous but mostly excited & filled with such a sense of accomplishment. It only took 35 years to get to this point, haahaa, but at least I got there. I'm not done either. I've got a whole set of quilts lined up & hope to have another show next year. I'm also very excited that I'm getting steady commissions coming in. I will be working on projects until the end of January. That is a huge blessing. My goal for next year is to make enough commissioned work to be able to pay for my studio to be started. I think its doable. I will post pictures of the opening tomorrow but won't have a chance to post detailed photos of each & every quilt until the end of the show. Hope you all are staying safe & warm with all this crazy weather we are having. There is a possibility of snow for Sparks tomorrow! Crazy enough I'm excited about it.

Busy

October is proving to be my our busiest month yet. I've hardly had two moments to sit down & say hello to this very neglected blog of mine. I have however been working my little buns off (little being used very loosely here) on my upcoming art show. So far I've finished 3 quilt tops & I'm halfway done with the 4th. Only 2 more to go. On top of getting ready for my first solo show I've been babysitting my neighbors little girl & working every Saturday at the Pumpkin Patch. It's been crazy. Even with all the craziness we've still managed to have some family fun. The girls are loving the new play structure Dean started building. Sloan is loving school (for the most part) & Omri is learning so many new signs & tying oh so hard to speak more clearly. I'm loving this beautiful Fall weather. The nights are getting chilly & the days are perfect mixture of warm yellow sunshine. The colors on the trees are changing & it's getting dark earlier. A reminder to soak up these last few weeks of our lovely Indian Summer.

On the Table

No really this was on my table this weekend. I found some of the fabric recently at Hancock & purchased the green vintage inspired print in Utah when I was at the Sewing Summit last year. Just haven't had the right project to use it on until now. I found this pattern on Pinterest & really felt that the fabric prints went with the feel of the pattern. When it's finished it will be a crib sized quilt. I don't have much time to make anything bigger at the moment. I have a few custom orders on the table & need to get them done soon. Add the upcoming pumpkin patch & holiday fairs that I have signed up to make stuff for & I will be busy until Christmas. That's a good thing. Now if I could just get my act together & list some tooth fairy pillows to my shop. Someone crack the whip please!

P.S. I pinned the original quilt I found inspiration from but can't find the pin now. That happens every now & then. If you know the quilt I'm talking about please let me know so I can give credit to the original artisan.