Kit Robinson Designs

I’ve been taking a workshop, Think like an Artist, from the wonderful Pamela Allen online at QuiltersKeepLearning. This first effort was a study in black and white fabrics. I loved the title of this book, and thought the juxtaposition of the apocalyptic and the mundane was irresistible. It is the first time I have made a quilt to match the title:

The End of America With Shoes and Wineglass

The 2nd lesson added color, either an analogous palette or one with complementary colors. With lots of helpful suggestions from Pamela, I put together my desert scene. Nothing is actually sewn down as yet, but unlike the black and white piece, which is destined to live only in the cyberworld, I am going to start sewing on this one as soon as I get some time.

Desert Almost Still Life

Who knew that starting a brand new quilt guild could be this fun? Up here in Northern Colorado a few of us got together and decided that we needed a guild focused on art and contemporary quilting, one that was geographically feasible to get to on those cold, snowy winter nights that we experience from time to time. We sent out a call to see if there was enough interest and the response has been phenomenal. We now have 47 paid members, and we are still in the organizational stage! Volunteers to hold board positions and do committee work such as the quilt show, hospitality, facilities, programs and all the myriad tasks that a guild has to do have been in enthusiastic supply. We realized that first we needed to raise some funds. Our amazing president, Stephanie Patterson, organized and held a Quilter’s Garage Sale last month and took in $1,400! Kelly Gallagher-Abbott and I worked hard on putting together a 5.5 x 5″ desktop calendar that comes in its own display case, and features 14 Northern Colorado artists. (Edited, printed and published by the multi-talented Kelly, I might add.) It is available for purchase at: jukeboxquilts

The cover quilt, A New Dawn, is by our wonderful local (and rapidly becoming nationally known) artist Melody Randol.

Recently my nephew’s girlfriend, Kat, graduated from massage therapy school. She did this while holding a full time job and caring for her two young daughters, an amazing achievement in my book.  I  made this  quilt, Follow Your Dreams,  as a present for her graduation.

Hawaiian Sparkle

This is a Hawaiian Appliqué square that I made for a class I am teaching at the Fort Collins, CO Presser Foot on September 20. This is a contemporary approach to design and needle-turn appliqué a Hawaiian quilt, and doesn’t involve the traditional folded cutwork that can be so difficult to perfect. In fact, this method if pretty foolproof, and very easy to learn. I can prove it - as a complete novice appliqué quilter I designed and made a quilt using this method and it won several national awards. (See Endless Hawaiian on my Contemporary Traditional gallery page.)

The appliqué top is made from a Lunn hand dye and the background is one of my own hand paints.

Its been a lot of fun to get back to Hawaiian quilting for a bit, its such a chance to work with beautiful fabrics without cutting them up into small pieces.

Hawaiian Sparkle Close Up

Rather than tossing some of the fabrics in my stash that are no longer the kind of fabric I use in my quilts, I’ve been painting them. Not only is it a lot of fun, but I now have about 30 transformed fat quarters in luscious colors and various techniques using mostly Setacolor paints. On a few I have added some Jacguard paint. Here are three of the pieces that I’ve painted recently.

This piece was painted on quality muslin yardage which I had kept for years, for some unknown reason.

Now I wish I had a lot more of this fabric, a white on white Christmas fabric that I picked up on sale after the holidays a few years ago. It painted up beautifully.

I had almost 8 yards of a boring solid pink good quality cotton. I think that I had planned to use it for a back for a quilt for my little girl when she graduated to a big girl bed. She is now 27, and I never use solids anymore, so I decided it was safe to transform it. The pink added such a wonderful undertone to every piece I painted on it.

So my suggestion is - go for it! See what you can do with those out of date fabrics before you toss them.

My guild has asked me to do a landscape design workshop, and I made this small quilt as a sample, using the relatively simple technique which I intend to teach. The inspiration was a picture that my son had taken in Switzerland, while he was doing an internship there. Here is the original photo (by my son, Alex Robinson):

 

This is my first real post on my blog, I guess I’ll see if it works! Reina is my nephew Schuyler’s baby girl, born on June 18th, 2007. Her mother, Amy, is of Japanese descent, so I tried to make a quilt with somewhat of an Oriental look, without actually using any Japanese fabrics. The circles are made from my own hand-painted fabric, out of drapery lining fabric. I am really liking the look this fabric creates, especially for landscapes.