I'm a Cheesehead Baby!!!

I love the Green Bay Packers and so does my daughter Jordana who lives in Green Bay and my hairdresser friend Sherrie. I designed these wall hangings and constructed them while I was on my quilt retreat the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I gave the wall hangings to Jordana and Sherrie as Christmas gifts.
I wanted a cheese head on the female motif's head and had to Google it to get an accurate image of it. I used one fabric and fabric paint and markers to get the highlights and lowlights of the cheese holes.

I had the green and gold fabrics from the 2013 Wisconsin Shop Hop from Andover Fabrics and thought it would have the Packer colors without the obvious Packer fabrics.  I chose the jersey number of Aaron Rogers because he is the quarterback. I designed two different hairstyles but everything else is the same.

I am considering a quilt pattern that would be interchangeable for all the NFL football teams. I understand the cheese head is only for the Packers so I have to figure out what women football fans would wear on their heads especially in the warm climates. I went to www.nfl.com to their pro shop and have a few ideas such as knit hats or a headband.

I did a raw edged fused applique technique and embellished with fabric paint, glitter, nail polish and rhinestones.



Bella Valora: Exploring the Color Wheel and Value

While teaching my Bella pattern class in October I had a student who did a different color scheme than I had explored. I have made 6-7 Bella quilts either using a one color (monochromatic) or a multicolor color scheme. I have another pattern and class I teach called "Fifteen Shades of Gray" which is the third photo in this blog. It has 15 very light to medium values of gray with three bright coordinating batiks as the applique colors for a different portrait quilt project. The student selected 24-25 gray squares and one color (blue) for the applique. This gave me the idea to combine the gray values from the Fifteen Shades of Gray pattern with the Bella pattern but instead of only one color applique I did a multicolor/color wheel color scheme. I chose warm colors (reds, oranges and yellows) for the hair and cool colors (blues, greens, turquoise and purples) for the facial features. I chose one white tone-on-tone fabric and 24 values of gray in this project. I placed the lightest values near the face and faded to darker values away from the face. I did separate the chin/neck/lower hair pattern into two sections because I wanted both blue violet and purple. My favorite color is pink so I put both magenta and pink in the hair applique. I added a gold for a small hair strand and would not do that again but use yellow orange instead like I used in the small curls in the lower part of the hair. I thought the YO was prettier than the gold.

The construction of the quilt is the same as the other Bella quilts. I changed the thread color for each coordinating piece of applique and used the same thread color to add quilting to the areas near the applique piece. I quilted the gray background/face/neck with a light gray thread.

I embellished with a blue nail polish on the open area of the mouth-turquoise glitter was added to the eyelid area. I glued a few rhinestones in the left sided background area. I auditioned hair flowers and beads for a necklace as I did in some of the other Bella quilts but it looked tacky and busy. I repeated the multicolor in the cute striped binding fabric.

Valora is the feminine version of the Italian word for value.

My Bella pattern is available from my website at www.laurieceesay.com.

This is Bella Chroma which explores the colors of the color wheel. Still one of my favorite color schemes!

This is the sample for my Fifteen Shades of Gray Class which is smaller at 12' square. Bella is 22.5" square.

I learned my students inspire me and see colors in a different way and it's all good to feed creativity off of each other!