I would just like to say congratulations to everyone for their pieces this month, they are all gorgeous and so well thought out.  My piece is on its way but I may struggle to finish it before midnight!! Will do my best though.
Ann

Contrast - Striped flowers

Contrast - use of black and white, use of vertical and horizontal stripes

I wanted to try out a new idea with my black and white stripes-- flower shapes with tiny flashes of colour together with matching vertical coloured lines of quilting. I have 2 larger pieces in mind that might use these flowers with the colour additions. I am fascinated with the optical illusions one can produce with stripes and small additions of colour.

Now for confession time- I cut my original piece of striped fabric as a 12 inch square intending to cut it back to a 10 inch square. Probably harking back to another challenge I was involved in. However I was able to salvage an 11 inch finished piece... not the 12 inch required for this group.

Contrast

When I read what the theme was for this month, my first idea was to use black/white in combination with red. I even made a small sketch :-). But thinking a bit more, it would have been the obvious choice for me. So I decided to do a bit more thinking and I came up with this idea:

The contrast is between the evergreen pines and the lonely deciduous tree. Also the contrast between the green - color of life - and the brown - color of decay/death. As usual all the fabric which I used are my own hand dyed ones.

Contrast

This is my "contrast" quilt. The basic design came from a workshop on "Notan" which I attended back in September 2011. I thoroughly enjoyed all the cutting out of paper we were doing at the time, but couldn't work out how to turn any of it into a textile piece. Well, not until now.
This is bondaweb applique onto an evenweave embroidery cotton from my stash. The applique fabrics were my own painted and dyed samples. Quilted, with a bias binding edging.
I was playing around with contrasts in texture and colour.

Contrast

I wanted to contrast colour, line and stitches.  The basic design was from a screen of my own design.

March theme

The random number generator does not pay any attention to the season :-), it picked as theme: Summer Adventure.

Contrast

"Contrast".

This is Hilary's quilt on the theme of "Contrast". She says, her quilt is "simply a contrast of colours which could be Summer and Winter or hot and cold."

On the buses

"On the buses - Northwich"

I took the subject rather literally, and have shown people getting on the bus. This bus is shown in the town of Northwich, my local town. The background is a collection of dyecatchers and some scrumpled bus timetables for the local area.
My apologies for being so late with this one.

Accepted the Challenge!

OK, so the theme for January was On The Buses.  I had no idea what on earth that was about.  So, I visited my old friend Google....figuring to find scenes of people on buses, views from buses, etc.  What I DIDN'T expect to find was that "On The Buses" was a sitcom out of the UK!! As that was stumbled upon about 1am, I went to bed thinking about the theme. Before I fell asleep I knew what I wanted to do. I was inspired by one of the promo pictures for the show which used a green bus. From scenes from the actual show, I guess they usually involve the normal red buses but there was at least one scene photo with a green bus. In the morning I picked out fabrics from my hand-dyed collections.  Found the green I wanted then the background, a transparency for the windows and an old drop cloth from years ago that I kept because I thought it looked so cool.

First I FMQed a sort of cityscape (with a small hint of a nod to Big Ben). Nothing exact. I was going with the comic feel. Cut out the bus, placed the windows in the slots. Behind the windows was the fun drop cloth...again going with the fun comic feel.  I looked at putting round wheels but it all got too kitchy for me. Then I found a black very long rubber band to represent the tires. Now it was all too symmetrical. In the promo picture, there was the name of the show in red on the green bus so I grabbed a strip of red and it was just the bit of asymmetry that it needed. And here it is.....

FUN  IN  THE  CITY

Nope, this piece will never hang in the Louvre, but I had fun doing it...and since the theme fit with the sitcom...that seemed appropriate.

Now I'm still trying to narrow down the ideas for Contrast....There are about 4 I would really like to do.....

(I mistakenly posted this on my own blog so I just copied it to this one where it really belongs. Sorry if you get both.)

Before my 2014 begins!

The minute the theme for November (at least I THINK it was November) was announced, I knew what I wanted to do.  I had this all planned for a larger art quilt but....oh well.  Seemed like a smaller one fit the bill for now.  From October through January my life was a zoo inside a hurricane, but this one I just couldn't let go.  It is inspired by a Hubble photograph of the Orion Nebula.  The background is a pounded fabric (black with gold metallic) which suits just fine I think. I had already dyed the cheesecloth for the larger piece. I love the jewel tones of the nebula and this brings that out. Also...just to give it a bit of outer space sparkle...I place some Angelina behind parts of the cheesecloth.  I'm very happy with it!!

It IS 12X12, just had to take the photo with my iPhone as my camera is headed to the shop. ;-((( so it looks a bit off kilter.

January's theme has me bum-fuzzled. But I'll come up with something. February's theme is difficult currently in that there are way too many ideas floating around in my head.  I've so far gotten it narrowed down to 4 or 5.  It will start tomorrow if all goes well.