Choose a type of fabric/fiber you have not worked with before. If you are used to working in cottons, use some velvet, silk, satin, lace, leather, suede, corduroy, denim, painted fusibles, painted coffee filters, dryer sheets…..you get the idea.  The field is wide open to choose any material/fabric that is new-to-you in order to give you the opportunity to move a bit further from the center of your comfort zone.

Betty Donahue
Wethersfield, Connecticut

Sew Much Fun
16" x 15"
Tyvek, cheese cloth, little bells, fusible web

I painted the tyvek for the background and the beads.  The flowers were made from scrunched up dyed cheese cloth. The leaves were painted fusible web sprinkled with glitter.

Cherie Brown
Del Mar, California

Leaf on Foil
8”x11”
Holographic foil; velvet; chiffon; razzle dazzle bobbin work

 

Elizabeth A. Dawson
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Cuatro
34" x 34"
Variety of fabrics including sheers, doe-suade, cotton and polyester.

I enjoyed working with a variety of fabrics and textures, and bringing out more texture with the different quilting designs

 

Linda Cline
San Leandro, CA

Untitled
13.5 x 9.5”
Painted Wonder Under, painted cheesecloth, hand spun thread clippings, free motion machine quilting, beads

I painted cheesecloth with a couple shades of blue paint. I used some puff paint quite by accident which had a nice effect.  It made the threads on the cloth appear thicker in those places after I ironed it. I also painted some Wonder Under in shades of red, orange and purple. I  worked with no particular images in mind, only did what the materials
seemed to need. I chose a hand dyed yellow base fabric and added torn strips of the painted Wonder Under. I thought about waves washing up on a shore as I placed torn cheese cloth on the surface in order to create interesting organic looking shapes. A while ago I had spun some of the clipped threads I had collected with a drop spindle. This project seemed the perfect place to put it. I have since added beads to complete this
quilt.  This was completely different that what I usually do, and very fun.

Marilyn Rose
Ridgeland, MS

Burned Out
12" square
various organzas on commercial fabric background

I cut out circles of various organzas, stitched them down in large spirals by machine, then took a heat gun to them to see what would happen. 

 

Sue Andrus
Towanda, PA

Wisteria Window
11"x14"

With visions of stone walls and windows in my head, I spent hours studying pictures of stone walls, buildings, and windows of all kinds. Moss added itself to the mix just about the time this challenge came out. Now I was checking out moss formations on stone walls. I decided to let things come out in a small version, to see what happened. I usually use cotton, so it was time to try silk! I decided some silk scraps I had could resemble stones, and dyed some of the scraps a muddy, mossy green color. I backed the silk pieces with Wonder Under, or Liquid Thread, fusibles, and cut up the fabrics and fused them onto a batting base to "build" the stone wall. The window is a piece of shiny, opalescent, synthetic with pastel behind and on top of it. Shredded, dyed silk batting and yarn scraps were trapped under a pale green tulle that I backed with Wonder Under for moss. The vine is made of couched yarns, the flowers from a cotton batik, and leaves were from a tiny piece of green silk. A comment I received after posting to the blog led me to add the brown yarn to give the gnarled look to the base of the vine. This piece began my Stones and Walls Series of quilts.

 

Tobi K. Hoffman
Ashland, Massachusetts

Fireworks
17-1/2" x 22"
Thin gauzy fabric samples with metallic prints.

This was actually completed months after the original date, because the fireworks, I discovered, needed black instead of silver behind them.

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