Art Threads: April 2018

Friday, April 13, 2018

Friday Inspiration - Spring Palette

I've been pondering the Second Quarter Fiber Art Challenge and thinking about the colors in the artwork, so I ran a color palette.

I love these colors - a bit of a subdued spring palette. I do think the yellow and pink need to be added in, though.

With these colors in mind, I went looking for yarn and found some nice matches!

Tosh Merino Light is one of my favorite yarns - so soft and nice to work with. The yarn above is the Scout colorway, ...

this one is Calligraphy,

and here is Dust Weaver.

Hand Maiden's Casbah Sock is very luxurious with its added cashmere. This colorway is Laurel.

Also from Hand Maiden, Mini Maiden in Peridot.

Finally, from Northbound Knitting this is Matcha in Merino/Silk Fingering. I've used this yarn several times and it's wonderful!

I ran my color palette on Big Huge Labs and the yarns photos are from Eat.Sleep.Knit. Now, back to planning my challenge entry!

Happy Creating! Deborah

Monday, April 9, 2018

Second Quarter Fiber Challenge

I had so much fun with my first quarter challenge that I'm ready for another one! This time I've selected a woodblock print by Japanese artist Imao Keinen (1845 - 1924), from his album Birds and Flowers.

Winter hung on a little longer than usual around here, so the plum blossoms and brightly colored bird look wonderful to me! Our fruit trees are just beginning to bloom and the song birds are starting to return. I love the delicate colors in this print, the richly textured tree bark, and the partly hidden bird that adds a lot of movement to the piece.

I'm not yet sure what I'll work on with this - maybe something inspired by the color palette, the blossoms, the bird, or simply the idea of spring itself. I hope this print inspires you to join me! Create a fiber art piece (knitting, crochet, embroidery, fabric design, weaving, sewing, quilting, .... ) and share it with us on this blog Monday, July 1st. I have the InLinkz button down now, so this date should stand! And I promise to be a better cheerleader this quarter!

I hope you join me!

Happy Creating! Deborah

Friday, April 6, 2018

First Quarter Fiber Challenge Reveal

Alright - a little late, but here's the reveal to the First Quarter Fiber Challenge! You can read in depth about the challenge here.

This is the photograph I chose as an inspiration. We often have cold, foggy mornings in January and when the fog freezes out it covers everything in sparkling diamonds! These are leftover Queen Anne's Lace blooms that were just as beautiful when I took this photo as they were in all their summer glory.

I had a hard time deciding which of my many ideas to make! Finally, I decided on embroidery. I pieced together denim and a scrap of curtain voile and then embroidered on top of that. The plan here is to make a pillow with it, but that hasn't happened yet!

It's really hard to see in the photo, but I used sparkling thread for the little star shapes and then also ran it up the stems. I went through dozens of tries to get how it really looks, but it just didn't work well!

Now if everything works right, you can add your piece inspired by the photograph by clicking below. There will be information to fill out that will link the photo to your blog, facebook post, instagram post, .... some place that you wrote about what you made. If you don't have a spot to link to, contact me and I'll get your photo up on this blog.

An InLinkz Link-up

Tune in on Monday to see the next quarter's inspiration!

Happy Creating! Deborah

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