Halloween - Totally NQR (not quilt related)

Goofy Halloween Fun at the Campus Health Center The nurses: Me: I'm a Nuva Ring! Me and my adopted son Tony (he's Fast Food Fred)

Andromeda

I've been ignoring this blog since summer... job changes and life just get in the way. But I did find time to make Andromeda, which is now hanging at the Coconino Center for The Arts in Flagstaff AZ.

The current show is "Night Visions III" and celebrates 50 years of Flagstaff being a dark skies community (we have several planetariums and astromony centers in the area, so street lights and other lighting is either a yellow light or an other hue that won't interfere with star gazing. This quilt had a strange start. One episode of this season's Project Runway (I am addicted to that show!) featured a challenge where the designers took photographs of New York at night and based their garments on their images. Leeann Marshall, who went on to win the season, based her design on a photo of a tree grate, which suddenly sent me into the "what if" mode. I searched the net for pix of tree grates and manhole covers. From those images, I drew the foundation pattern for the 279 individual pieces in the arch. Placed in a starry sky, its up to the viewer to decide what it really is! Could be a star ship, could be a virus, could be a manhole cover!

Hoffman Challenge 2008

Path of the Lotus

The Hoffman challenge fabric for this year was a curious print of a large peacock. and a strong Asian feel. The coordiates included a black metallic stripe and some nice blenders, but I knew that I didn't want to focus on the peacock, just not my style! I've been working on ideas for labyrinth quilts since last year's Challenge and this seems to be the next installment! Challenge quilts have to fit a certain size (width and length) but there are no restrictions on shape, so I decided to start drawing a path. It almost drew itself! The half starts are all fussy cut from the challenge fabric and a darker colorway. The corner points are foundation pieced and the lotus at the top and bottom centers are stablized, hand beaded, and sewn on as 3-D elements. I was inspired more by the colors than the print in this case. Picture courtesy of Karen Pharr, and taken at the first public showing of all of the Hoffman Challenge Quilts for this year. Mine is off traveling for a year... to places I can only dream of. And the first labyrinth should be home at the end of month!