Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2013 Entry

     I tried to enter the Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side last Spring, but I was working on some deadline that week, and I didn't get it posted in time. This fall I am getting it in early.

                            
                                  
                        http://amyscreativeside.com/2013/10/25/bloggers-quilt-festival-scrappy-quilts/
                        
     I have chosen to enter a quilt that I call "My Waterlilies".

 

     Here is a detail of the fabulous machine quilting by my dear friend, Regina Carter. Since the subject matter was watery, she chose a very watery looking pattern for the quilting. She always knows just what to do to bring out the best of your quilt.

     I guess this quilt is on my mind today because someone wrote to me to ask me if there was a pattern for it. There isn't. I can't make a pattern for it because it is nothing but half square triangles. 

     I am sorry, I cannot provide links to past blog posts about this quilt. I finished this quilt right before I started blogging, so I never wrote any blog posts about it.

     A couple of years ago I was browsing through a book of paintings by Claude Monet. I found a painting that I loved and wanted to try to interpret in a quilt.  

     You can see that this is a well worn copy of that photo. It got carried around quite a bit for about 2 years. I might have finished more quickly if I hadn't sold one house, bought another, and moved while I was working on this quilt. Can you see how a grid is drawn on the photo?

     The idea was to divide the photo into a grid and interpret each square on the grid as well as possible by choosing batiks with the same colors. I thought that batiks would enhance the watery feel. This could never be a pattern, since it is all about which colors you choose, and how you place them. I would love to teach it as a class though. I love that you get something that is at once alike and very different than the original subject. 

     I am currently working on another quilt like this, but I am using a different block, different fabric styles, and of course, a different painting.