Black Friday Chaos

The first thing that came to mind when I heard Chaos was the inevitable shopping I had ahead of me for the holidays.

I tried to use warm colors to give the feeling of movement and pandemonium but I'm now not sure if I put too much chaos into the piece.  ;)

Nature's Chaos

Yeah, I'm with you Beverly. I wanted to get away from the obvious. With the Christmas season coming on, and a timely walk in the woods, I began thinking about Nature's Chaos vs Man-made Chaos and found a lot of beauty in Nature's way.

I took several pictures and found myself rearranging the leaves to fit just so. This piece is the first photo I took (before I thought to rearrange), and guess what, it was the photo that looked the most natural and that I liked the best.

The center is a photo of leaves, printed onto fabric, just laying along the path in Nature's way of chaos. I've machine quilted over some of the leaves and added rock-like beads. The fabric border was painted using whatever leaf-like stamps I had. For the added leaves, I sewed onto stabilizer and organza.

Chaos: Beverly H.

When I started thinking about how I would interpret this word, I knew I had to go beyond the dictionary meaning. I chose to interpret something that I find chaotic-probably a sign of increasing age! As I thought about just what it would be, freeway driving was the first thing to pop into my mind. I grew up learning to drive on the freeways of Southern California, and I've come to this- I hate it!



I used discharged and overdyed fabric. It's machine pieced, hand embroidered and beaded, and machine quilted. I'm pleased enough with how this came out that I've decided to expand on the idea, maybe in different colors. Once I got started, it just seemed to take on a life of its own.

Finally the frog.. I knew I wanted the woven background. I was going to first do a threadplay frog but realized that would never happen. Looked for frog fabric.. that was not easy .. the one I found is good but the colours are not what I really wanted..but so be it..

now on the COLD my word as for chaos... I have been living that so might be easy..oh sure..

Angela

First Snowfall

My first craft was crochet. I have wanted to crochet snowflakes for a long time.
By Sylvia

Cold Margarita

"Cold Margarita"

I love cold weather better than the heat. (I know, I know...why do I live in AZ?!) When I saw the new word, "Cold," I thought not of being cold, but how to get cooled down in the heat. Hence, a frozen margarita! I had a lot of fun picking out fabric pieces. I happened on a sale on metallic threads and bought several. My Mother makes beaded bracelets, so she invited me over to look through her stash. White beads for the salt on the rim of the glass was my first thought. Once I saw all she had, I chose and sewed on more! The straw is made of clear, tubular beads. I had never used metallic threads, so that was an education in itself. As usual with this group project, I learned a lot by doing this one. Cheers!!

By Nancy

Chinese Frogs, a little late

I got the idea for the Chinese jacket almost as soon as we got "the word." I had some beautiful silk brocade left over from making a Chinese-style jacket for my niece a couple of years ago and figured that would be perfect. Well, it would have been, IF I could have remembered where I had stashed the fabric. I finally gave up and made it in other colors. In retrospect, I wish I had made the jacket in the red border fabric, and used the floral for the border--the frogs don't show up well. The quilt said it wanted a beaded border, which annoyed me, but it didn't take as long as I thought it would. But then the jacket looked bare, so I added some beads to that as well--mostly little red sparkly ones. The jackets opens up to reveal a fun red cat-print lining. I couldn't find any frog prints in red.

Not my favorite of the the ones I've made for this project, but at least it's done. Now on to Peace and I'll be all caught up.

Frosty Bridge

I didn't notice until AFTER I looked at all of yours (and had already started mine), that all of us used a blue background-HONEST! and interesting...

So, this is my COLD piece. I'm not an artist, so the bridge is questionable; thank goodness for titles. My vision is looking under the bridge, so you don't see the top of the bridge. (If you have to explain your joke/art, it isn't a joke/art.) sigh...

I wanted to play with mixing machine quilting with hand embroidery. If I really wanted to do it justice, I would have piled on more handwork over more machine work, but I wanted to keep things simple, and quick.

As much as I love quilting, and especially handwork, I have to repeat to myself always...enjoy the process..., but I'll tell you, working small is great!

Snowflake

Here is my "Cold" quilt, actually finished on time. Now I have to go back and do "Frogs" and "Peace." Sigh. You can't see from the picture, but the white snowflake fabric is sparkly with silver metallic. It's quilted in sparkly thread as well.

My first idea was to do a sunprint of snowflakes, inspired by a quilt in "Quick Strip paper Piecing" by Peggy Martin. I took a week long seminar from her in late August/early September. However, things got crazy when I got home. Had to get ready for Quilt Fest, and then we left town in our RV for a month. When we got back (a week ago), the sun-printing season was definitely over!

The quilt I ended up making is one of the blocks in Peggy's sun-printed and paper-foundation pieced quilt. I wanted it to evoke snowshoeing in the Uintas on a sunny Sunday morning, right after a snowstorm. The sky is so blue it almost hurts, and the snow just sparkles.

Cold Night in Maine

Yea! My first project finished. I started this yesterday morning and couldn't stop until it was finished! The snow is batting, wool felt pine trees, cardinal button and white metallic thread for the quilting.  We spent many winters in rural Maine and there were many nights that looked like this.  It's so quiet that you can almost hear the snowflakes hit the ground.  The cardinal is there because I love them and the quilt needed a dab of color.

Cold Night in Maine

By Bev D

Brrrrrrrr

Baby it's Cold outside!

I suppose today is an appropriate day for my "Cold" quilt to make it's debut because we had our first snowfall.  My yard is covered with about an inch of the beautiful stuff but it won't be there for long since it is warm enough that everything is melting already.

I had many ideas go through my head for Cold: cold turkey, cold shoulder, cold feet, snow, ice, icicles, and snowmen to name a few. I sketched out many of these ideas but when it came down to the wire this frosty face was the image I decided to go with. My son says it looks more like an image of warm than cold because of the big puffy coat. However my thinking was more along the lines of a cold so frigid that even a big puffy coat will not keep you warm. A chill so cold that you don't want to open your eyes for fear of freezing your eyeballs. Perhaps I need to add more frosty bits (glitter perhaps?) along the scarf and face to better convey a more frosty image?