Enjoying the Process

It starts with a photograph and an idea... I love little houses and birdhouses. You may remember last year, my sketchbook was full of drawings from my collection of little houses. This year I went outside for my inspiration. Wouldn't you agree this is the year of winter and snow?
If your wondering where I'm getting my inspiration from join Linda and Laura Kemshall over at their website and join their DMTV show. It's a wonderful and creative learning channel created by them to inspire us all! I highly recommend it!
From this sketch I plan on doing a series of small quilts. Not your traditional quilts, I plan on dying my own fabric, printing with stamps, drawing, painting and using free motion stitching to quilt this series. I'm looking forward to some fun and most likely a few mistakes. I can't wait to share my experiments with you.

It always starts with my sketchbook which I lovingly refer to has my recipe book. From the drawing in the first photo I made this little stamp, and the ideas started to flow.

This was stamped and the design was created with quilting in mind. I've used pencil on the stamp to add value for depth. Sorry about the glare on this photo. I got so excited about the quilting designs I jumped to fabric.

I'm a little rusty with the free motion quilting and my sewing machine. Maybe I should think about color and quilting designs.

Tracing paper, pencil and oil pastel.

Another version

I plan on dying white cotton and will only use two colors for the process. I can always use oil pastel to add more color at a later time.

Today I cut the fabric and prepared the fabric for dying with soda ash. See you later in the week with photos of my experiments. I forgot to mention that I'm also sharing this process with my advance painting students.