More Adventures in Watercolor and a Napkin Quilt Update

Okay, here goes with another watercolor:

This is my very blatant and not very successful attempt to paint like artist Joyce Hicks, specifically her painting called "Aspen Color".   I love her work and would so like to be able to paint like her.  My first attempt at this was much paler and I liked it better up close, but standing away from it, as you normally would while viewing, the two main trees in the front just disappeared.  At the suggestion of my class instructor, I darkened the backgrounds which made the trees more visible but all color subtlety was lost.  Still and all, I kinda like it.  I did, by the way, contact the artist and get her gracious permission to post my attempt at copying.  Do check out her website and blog to see her gorgeous paintings.

On the quilting front, I realized I didn't post a picture of the back of the Tuesday Morning Napkin Quilt so here it is all bound and washed.

And it wouldn't be a quilt post without a folded or rolled shot, so here's another!

It washed up just fine and I think it makes a great, inexpensive utility quilt.  I'm keeping it in my car as my emergency quilt.

WIP Wednesday - Tuesday Morning Quilt

Tuesday Morning had these gorgeous striped cotton napkins and I fell in love with the bright fall colors.  Naturally, I thought...quilt!  Like maybe for a picnic.  So I bought all they had, intending to just stitch them together maybe turning the stripes in different directions which would have been quite all right and I would've had a finished quilt weeks ago without all the mess-ups. But then I thought about cutting them up and sewing them back together like the mitered square quilts I've seen made from striped fabric.  Course that didn't quite work out.  Plus there were all the placement errors and cutting oopses that led to fewer useable napkins.  The cutting mistakes wound up as part of the backing and I left the rest alone.

The fabric is a heavier texture than quilting cotton, but still very workable.  It's kinda stretchy, but I always starch a good bit, so that wasn't a problem during piecing or the quilting, which is just straight line, in the ditch and about 3/8 inch either side of the seams.  I'm wondering if I should add more quilting?  Probably not.  I don't want to devote any more time to this little experiment gone wrong!

Even with the mistakes and problems, I still like this little quilt  because of the happy colors.  I'm  sewing the binding on now and linking up with WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Charity Quilt Finish

Today I'm linking up with the small blog meet at Lily's Quilts.  What a nice idea to have a link party for small blogs.  I like it.

Well, it's definitely a Fresh Sewing Day for me as well.   I was finishing up the quilting on this little quilt by six this morning.  Guild meeting is tonight and I'd really like to turn this in as I've had the kit for months.  Just a simple little block quilt.  Here it is:

As usual, my favorite part of the process was the quilting.  I did daisies and loops in red thread which matched the red print backing.  My first thread choice was purple but no matter how much I adjusted the tension little dots of purple showed through on the back so I gave up & switched to red.  Here is a close up of the quilting.

I like how the red shows up against the purple and green.  One thing I learned quilting this was that different fabrics affect the quality of your quilting.  On some of the fabric squares my stitches look pretty even and the quilting went smoothly.  On others, not so much.  The closer the weave or higher the thread count, the better the quilting looked.  Another reason to use the best quality fabric you can, I suppose.

So, that's my contribution for today.  Now that it's done maybe I can move on to something a little more exciting.  Delicious new fabric arrived in the mail yesterday and I have so many projects I want to start that it's mentally paralyzing! 

What a lovely day it's been so far.  Starting off with a quilt finish is always nice.  That little number is in the wash right now with a couple of color catchers.  Plus, I have sourdough bread rising and I'm getting ready for my watercolor class in a couple of hours.  Hope all of you have lovely, productive days.  But first, go over to Lily's Quilts and check out all the other entries.  Many thanks to Lily's Quilts for hosting!