More Kawandi Quilts!

Greetings and happy spring rainy stormy days!  Last month, I finished Kawandi #6, but I never posted it, so I am doing that now.  I used a mostly green and blue pallet. I just really wanted to use that blue with chartreus bubbly looking fabric, but I ended up reining it in a little, which I think was a good decision. 

A couple friends came over, today, to have a sew day at my house.  It was just good to do some catching up and sewing.  I decided to make a Kawandi quilt with solid colored jelly roll strips.  I planned the layout with the solid fabrics, but I just could not do it completely solid.  Using solids is fairly new for me, as I love wild prints.  I used one, non-solid color fabric.  I really think it did come out better with my modifications.  Below is Kawandi #7!

At first, I was hesitant to put that pink in, but it really goes with the print I chose.  I made the pink strips one-quarter inch narrower than the other strips.  I think that toned it down a tick.  Also, it helped move the composition a little to the right, so it is not exactly centered.  I was excited about trying a Kawandi with strips instead of odd sizes of rectangles.  

I am considering challenging myself to use all the left-overs in another Kawandi quilt.  Just thinking . . .

Graffiti Quilt (one type of artist inspiring another type of artist)

I heard about "graffiti quilts" last August.  The term intrigued and excited me.   When I went on-line to look this up, I was very disappointed that some long-arm quilters were making "thread paintings," but calling them graffiti quilts.  The "graffiti quilts" I was seeing were fancy immaculate quilts, which to my mind, have nothing to do with graffiti.  I think, actual graffiti makes a statement in a bold and raw fashion.  I had a discussion, about this situation with a fellow quilter, who's little group of quilters decided to each make a graffiti quilt, but not with thread painting.  They wanted to do small wall-hangings that had a message in a bold fashion.  I thought they were quite good and not fancy and elegant.  I started my own "graffiti quilt" in November.  

I decided to use some words from a song as a statement in my graffiti quilt.  I mulled it over for a while, then went with Once in a Lifetime, by the Talking Heads.  

My wall-hanging is 15.5" X 22".  I sewed a casing on the back and cut a branch from the bush in our front yard to hang it on, using a ribbon that had previously tied up a stack of fat quarters.  I used what I had on hand to make it.  The words are painted on white muslin with woodless watercolor pencils.  The entire thing is quilt-as-you-go.  The backing, batting, and the two pieces of fabric behind the Roman pillar started out as a piece to practice my stippling on.  I just added everything else to it.  This is my graffiti.