My Bella Pattern Revamped for Wonderfil Threads

I took my drawing of my Bella pattern and enlarged it to 24" square and adapted it to a more realistic version. Some things are similar but there are much more hair strands, skin tone shading and eye detail. I was asked by Wonderfil Threads from Calgary, Alberta Canada to make a wall hanging quilt. I have been one of their featured teachers and I receive perks from the company so I thought it was honorable to make a quilt, when they asked me, which will be displayed when the company vends at markets and festivals. The idea of pink hair came from me while working in a hair salon and reading all the ads in hair stylist publications and the trend has been vibrant colored hair. I chose pink because it's my favorite color! I selected blue/turquoise for the eye shadow because it was a color in the background fabric and it seemed retro-like in a 1960s kind of way. When selecting the lip color I stayed with the 1960s theme and chose a lighter pink to mimic the frosted lips of the decade a la Twiggy and Mary Quant!!

This is a starting point photo of the applique pieces fused and cut out and the background and binding fabrics chosen. The applique pieces are then fused to the background and with 7 different colors of hair it was a bit complicated! Could I turn this into a pattern-it would be hard to explain the process and order to fuse the applique pieces to the background fabric. The whole fusing process is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together!!

This is a photo of the details of the face. I used only Wonderfil Threads since this project was about their products. Some of the threads used were Fabulux rayon thread which has a beautiful shimmer on the hair; 40 wt rayon variegated for the eyes and mouth and Egyptian cotton "Tutti" in  variegated browns for the skin tones. I embellished with loose chunky glitter on the eyelid for "eyeliner," nail polish on the mouth and eye shadow areas; a rhinestone for a nose piecing and a variety of rainbow colored beads hand sewn to form a necklace. I will be sending this one onto the Wonderfil folks and plan to make another version for myself with a woman of color with red hair and green eye shadow!!

Modern Scrappy Portrait Quilt Class at IQF Houston

I will be teaching my "Modern Scrappy Portrait Quilt" Class using my Bella pattern at the International Quilt Festival in Houston Saturday November 5, 2016. The website is www.quilts.com to register and the Class is #703 and is a 6 hour class. The class kit will have 25  pre-cut 5" squares from Cherrywood Hand-Dyed Fabric for the pieced background as well as the Bella pattern. Cherrywood is the fabric company that created The Wicked and The Lion King Challenges that have been so popular! Their hand dyed fabric is so soft and buttery and I just wanted to pet them and ooh and aah over them before I cut the fabric into kits. We will be exploring the color wheel and placement of color to get more visual impact with the 25 different colors in the pieced background. The applique in a raw edged fused technique. I hope to see you there. If not The Bella pattern can be purchased on my website at www.laurieceesay.com

New Pattern: Jingle Bella

My Bella pattern has been very popular and I have used it as the subject of many quilt venues and guild workshops. I have designed a Halloween, a winter and a curly haired version of Bella. At my local quilt shop, Pine Street Quilts in Marinette Wisconsin, and while visiting quilt guilds the request for a Christmas/Santa hat Bella has been vocalized. I designed this quilt based on the requests and I love Santa hats and Christmas colors also! I purchased a Moda Fabrics charm pack and challenged myself to ONLY use the charm pack and not add other fabrics. The blues and turquoise threw me off a bit because they are not traditionally Christmas colors. I treated them as sky colors and the rest was easy. I did not embellish this quilt much because the whimsical prints had enough activity-just some fabric paint on the eye, rhinestones and nail polish on the mouth and eye. If you view the photo you will see a trim hand sewn to the bottom of the quilt to look like Christmas garland that is so cute and sparkly!! This quilt is on display at Pine Street Quilts at 801 Marinette Avenue, Marinette WI as a shop sample and the patterns are for sale there. I also have them for sale on my website www.laurieceesay.com through PayPal. I have been asked to design an Easter hat Bella-would you buy this version if it was available?

 

Art Quilts Around The World Challenge: Letters From Home - Menominee Michigan Lighthouse

 My Facebook art quilt group Art Quilts Around The World had it's current challenge reveal yesterday-I am late because it's a crazy busy time with my quilt teaching stuff. I am a day late and have a day off today so here goes. The theme was called Letters from Home and a stylized stamp of the area we live in. I had a very very hard time with this challenge because I prefer to make portrait quilts. The city I have lived in the past 9+ years is Menominee Michigan. The Menominee Indian Tribe is where the city gets it's name. I Googled images of Menominee Indian woman and got no results that interested me. The city across the Menominee River is Marinette, WI and they were named after Queen Marinette who was a Menominee Indian woman. Again I Googled images of her and she was photographed only as an older woman and I didn't want a quilt like that. So plan C is a lighthouse which is everywhere in my city. Menominee is on the bay side of Lake Michigan and near where the Menominee River connects to Lake Michigan. We have lots of water and thus have a lighthouse. I made a lighthouse quilt a few years ago for a local fundraiser and adapted that pattern to this quilt so my quilt image is not fully accurate to the actual Menominee lighthouse. I planned to use a white background and blue for the raw edged fused applique to give a nautical look then added red since red is on the real lighthouse. I added a small amount of blue glitter nail polish to the water area and some silver glitter polish to the sun area-the quilt didn't scream out for sparkle. It will be given to a local charity for fundraising purposes.

This is the name of my local newspaper and they use the lighthouse in their logo and the lighthouse is getting a facelift accoridng to yesterday's newspaper which was timely for this blog post. 
The next challenge is about Science which is not one of my favorites either. Any ideas out there? Maybe physiology, muscles or bones of the body, skulls Ala Sugar Skulls!!!