(via Free Form)

Frieda Anderson is a renowned author, teacher, artist, and quilt designer whose custom-dyed fabrics form the basis for her dazzling quilts, ...

Ranging from golden yellow to rust, purple and deepest green, the material was especially hand dyed for this piece. The gentle curves in the design accent the flow of the colors. 78x58"

Today I'm sharing a art quilt that I made for this month's challenge. The challenge theme was coffee or tea, then why did I do a tree? Well here is my thought process... I was thinking that the other participants were going to go with tea pots and cups or coffee. So here is my spin on the challenge, the background fabrics were all tea dyed. Some of the teas were raspberry, peach and black tea. I have to tell you when I was pressing the quilt it smelled yummy! Here is a side view to show you how the tree bark was curved. The leaves were made from Tyvek, stitched and melted with a craft heat gun. Then the tough part was attaching them to wire! At first I was hand sewing them to the wire, but gave up and used E6000. I wanted to show you the tree bark...it was felted with brown craft felt, brown velvet, sari silk, quilting fabric, wool roving and yarn scraps. I have to tell you the bark was a BLAST to make. But when you peak into the tree hole, you see paper music score. That paper crafter or should I say that mixed media inner artist in me could not resist. I will post more pictures about the challenge on Thursday so you can see what the rest of the group did. Until then go get crafty! Judy 

EDIT: Purchase ‘pieced’: a quiltmaking book. My book ‘pieced’ includes the pattern and outlines the process taught in this workshop, through detailed instructions and pages of photographs. It can be purchased in physical or ditigal form here.

A raffle quilt made by the Retreating Angels

In the fall of 2009, I journeyed to the farm country of Baltimore, Ohio to begin my first weeks of study with Nancy Crow. Anyone who has studied with Nancy knows that one of the perks of the busine…

This piece of sashiko is going to be the "Japan" part of my 2010 holiday set of journal quilts. I've done "Singapore" and "North Island, New Zealand" which you can see in progress by clicking on those two places. The project will also include the miniature "Storm at Sea" quilt that I started at the Timaru Quilters' Gathering. I stitched this using Susan Fletcher's method of applying the design with vilene on the back of the work, as we did with her "Dragonfly Over Diamond Waves" tutorial. The journal quilt is very much in the style of Sylvia Pippen, with the flowers appliqued onto the panel after fussy-cutting them from some Japanese fabric. I wanted to use flowers to represent the wonderful plants and colour we enjoyed in Tokyo (even though we missed the cherry blossom). Here is a picture of the azaleas in bloom at the Nezu shrine.

My blog is about my artistic life as a graphic artist and quilter