Judy's- Wild Whimsical Quilt

Wild took me on a wild ride because when I heard the word I thought I was going to do wild hair with wildlife in it. I just couldn't get that idea worked out. Next it was wild fabric. Another no go because it was just a mess. Next the actual word WILD made with different fabrics that would portray animals. Nope, just not me.

I tried scrunching up cheesecloth on top of fabric to make it interesting. Sigh, nothing would work on it.

I drew branches thinking the wild nature of the tree branches would be nice. Again that was just a mess.

This is a photo of some of the fabrics I pulled out trying to figure out how I was going to make a Wild quilt. A lot of them actually made it into the quilt. If you go to my Facebook page Wrapped In Quilts you can see a tour of these fabrics along with an explanation of my thoughts.

The story that goes with this quilt is that I love to hike in the mountains and the trees are so beautiful with their leaves waving. To be out in nature can be a serene, healing place, but it can also be a wild place.  I've been surprised in the woods with snakes, wild pigs, and deer. 

I made the hills look like leaves in color and quilting but it was too similar to what I made last time with the blue mountains. I had a scrap of wavy fabric that was left over from a birthday banner I made and laid it on the mountains which made me smile. So the whimsical waves on the mountains were added to the quilt to make it fun.

Andrea's Wild quilt

Wild Rabbits Running Wild

11"x14"

Whole cloth on cotton, snow-dyed cotton, mono-print, silk-screen and thermofax screen.

Originally I was designing a wild flower-themed quilt, using Queen Anne's Lace ( daucus carota ) wild carrot.  I took lots of photos as the plant is "in season" now and growing everywhere except in my yard where it would be very welcome.  Then, while running errands about a month ago, I was driving home on a road I have driven hundreds of times, but this particular time noticed a sign that changed the creative process in an instant ( I love when that happens! ): SLOW WILDLIFE XING.

This sign is either new or has been there for years and I never paid attention to it.  As I have had the word "wild" on my mind, the sign caught my eye and imagination with an idea that was much more motivating to me than the wildflower concept.  I immediately "saw" giant wild rabbits leaping back and forth across the road.  Like Queen Anne's Lace, rabbits are very much in season now.  I can pull into my driveway most evenings and see at least three munching away on my plants!

I did know that what ever the design, I wanted to include mono-printed imagery using my gelatin plate.  The background started off being just an experiment with a hand cut mylar stencil applying the paint on the plate in various ways using non-rabbit colors for fun.  The more I played and layered the image, the more I liked the result and thought, "what if" I allowed myself to use this experimental piece as the "real thing"?  So I proceeded by layering more imagery using silk screen and thermofax screen methods, and was quite pleased with the result.  When I was ready to add the binding, I thought I would just use white fabric, but happened to have a piece of snow-dyed fabric out for another project, looked at it and realized that it had all of the colors that I used in the quilt and it blended rather nicely.  I then "auditioned" the white, which was too stark.  Another one go those unplanned moments that worked!

Dee's Wild Color Wheel

 Wild Color Wheel 

Would you just look at this colorful mess?  My color wheel exploded!  Thanks to unpredictable Yellow going wild.  Yellow is always causing so much trouble.  She knows how beautiful and irresistible she is and she flaunts it.  She has taken over several of my projects; I don’t like to admit that she ruined them, but you have to keep Yellow on a tight rein because a little goes a long way.

This project happened in stages.  I did the zen doodles with black scribble paint one session.  It sat for a few months then I fused on the color wheel, except my yellow fabric ended up with the fusible on the wrong side so I had no yellow.  It was sat for another month and then with pens and pencils I began coloring in the doodles.  It seemed that Yellow took off on a tangent of her own.  Then the last stage, which happened to be on July 4^th, I added a few flowers to Yellow and quilted the doodles.  The outside edges are bound with a zigzag stitch.  I had so much fun making this piece!  This was all about playing and having fun with simple tools.

This also looks like PacMan; so we could say that PacMan went wild in my studio, eating up all the fabric.

Alice's Wild Quilt: Killing Two Birds with One Stone

My quilt and fabric designer hero is Kaffe Fassett.  Therefore, it’s hard to throw out even a small scrap of fabric left over from any of the quilts I’ve made using them.  Recently I’ve been working on a “Mile a Minute” quilt which is a marvelous way to use even tiny scraps.  I won’t try to explain this process here, but anyone interested can Google that name and learn about these quilts. (I first learned about the process about 18 years ago!)

As this quilt started to come together, I stood back and looked at the blocks on my design wall.   I actually said aloud,  “This quilt is totally wild!” 

Wild!  Ah ha, a light-bulb moment!  I could turn several of these blocks into my Wild quilt for Material Mavens!  In truth, I had been struggling to come up with a vision for this MM theme.

And so was born my Wild quilt, using four of the Mile-a-Minute blocks.  I could easily spare them; the quilt has now a total of 56 six inch blocks!  I chose four of the blocks I was the most fond of, sewed them together, sandwiched them with batting and another piece of KF fabric. For its quilting I hand-embroidered a simple running stitch with a variegated perle cotton.  The binding on the quilt was left over from one of the many KF quilts I’ve made in the last few years.  My little MM quilt uses about 20-25 different scraps of various sizes; and that’s not counting the backing and the binding!  The large quilt uses scores more. When it’s done, I’ll send all you Mavens a photo of it.

This has been a “killing two birds with one stone” project for me, and I am delighted with both little and big quilts.  AND with the “Mile-a-Minute” process, that I urge you to learn all about!

Here the corner is folded back to show the quilt's backing.  I've used
this gold Paperweights fabric in many quilts!

http://patchworkpie.blogspot.com/2008/06/mile-minute-quilt.html

Kathy's "WILD FLOWERS"

WILD FLOWERS

From the moment we got our new "WILD" Challenge, I knew exactly what I wanted to do !

And then.....   As I was completing the requirements for my "Master Gardener Certification" through Texas A&M University, I had what we sometimes call an "Ah-Ha" moment !   What could be more perfect than a simple rendition of the beautiful "WILD" Texas Sunflowers that adorn our highways, fields, and gardens !     The Texas Sunflowers are abundant; they don't need any special  gardening care, and they're just about as wild, independent and "sassy" as can be !

I found this beautiful Sunflower fabric in one of our local shops, and knew right away it was the perfect jumping off point for my "Wild" quilt.   All of the design elements were free-motion quilted using Madeira Monofilament thread.   I free-motioned quilted the background area and echo-stitched around all of the petals to give the quilt more texture.

And then the beads !    Using three different varieties of beads, I hand stitched each bead to the center of the flower.  The beads represent the seeds that Sunflowers produce... those same seeds we love to eat as snacks !

Hope y'all enjoy this brief description.    And before posting and signing off...…

      

I'd like to thank Alice, our Fearless Leader, who coached me and with great patience and kindness posted all of the pictures of my quilts for the last several reveals as I struggled with the drastic switch from a McIntosh platform to a PC.   

I'm still very slow with all this computer "stuff" and it took my husband and me a chunk of time to get the pictures out of the camera, get them onto my computer, and then find the picture(s) in a not-so-very-intuitive location on the computer !  Obviously, I need to continue reading "Windows 10 for Dummies"!        

Peace and blessings to all  😁