Stretching

In addition to fighting with sewing machines that are not my friends and working on the second Nine Patch, a Disappearing Nine Patch and a couple of circle quilts, I have been trying to force myself to play and to stretch. I am working or playing with some exercises in Jeanne Williamson's The Uncommon Quilter.

The instructions suggest that you make a small playful quilt a week, to stretch your creativity and suggest that you make them all the same size. I love that idea as I love multiples (piles of sticks, pencils, crayons, books) but somehow I went right off on a tangent and the first two I have worked on are nothing like the same size and more over they are both working with curves as I am currently feeling curve curious -- rather than each playing with new things.

The first one I tried was an assignment to quilt a sandwich together and then to play with painting the backside so that the paint oozes through the holes produced by the quilting. Willimanson's model was a simple grid, mine was curves.

Here it is from the front after the first layer of paint.

That weird smudging spreading stain was one of the features I especially disliked.

Here it is from the backside -- not the game I was playing but I really liked the painted side more than the front.

Because I was not satisfied with the front -- the smudge annoyed me, and the whole thing was just too nondescript, I figured I would go ahead and paint the sampler on the front as well.
The additional paint was an improvement.

I will definitely be playing with painting or dying more of this white on white fabric as I think it produces interesting effects.