RED

I confess I'm infatuated with red right now. I wearing it, I'm painting with it and I finally ordered a huge hunk of red fabric. (Which red to buy is another long story. Do you know how many reds there are in the Kona Solids collection?)

Valentines, poppies, winter sweaters, apples, chilies, Christmas lights, shoes, cherries, Japanese maple leaves, the walls in my aunt's sitting room, lacquer bowls, lava, sealing wax, lobsters, my new short corduroy skirt, some baseball team, Lego bricks, roses, Chinese lanterns, nail polish, Coke cans.

I want to glow red.

"Out of the ashes, light"

2013, 8.5" x 8.5", hand appliquéd and hand quilted.

Not so good...

Sometimes a vision just doesn't work out.  I have a big bag of hand-dyed oranges, pinks and yellows left over from this quilt https://plus.google.com/photos/101418904686202842633/albums/5351802861176916385/5357734975944919074?banner=pwa&pid=5357734975944919074&oid=101418904686202842633

It's beautiful fabric, there's lots of it and I would love to use it to make another big quilt. I started playing with some blocks of simple layered shapes. My gut tells me to align the shapes to the squares, but I thought to push the edge and set them on an angle.

Not looking good. Back to the drawing board and trusting my gut. Not everything has to be edgy ( or perhaps eggy).

Colorways

What is it about colorways that fascinates? My mother used to get wallpaper sample books for me when I was a kid and I loved cutting out the flowers from the different colorway pages. The same design rendered in greens, blues, yellows and pinks never lost their interest for me. I still love looking at the same designs in multiple colors, only now it is mostly fabric, not wallpaper.

Here is the Goldilocks pattern from a few weeks ago, done in some colors that remind me of my Grandmother's set of doll dishes. I played with the dishes when I visited her apartment in NYC and when she and Pappy moved into their travel trailer, she gave them to me and my sister.

If I sound like an old woman with all this reminiscing, perhaps that's the case, but color has always had a visceral effect on me and thinking about colors is like curling up in a sunny spot. Revisiting those sunny spots from childhood gives me joy. Color is joy in my heart.

"Fiesta"

2013, hand appliquéd, hand quilted, 8.5" x 8.5"