Iris Quilts
  • Home Page
  • Galleries
  • Blog
  • Pattern & Tool Shop
  • About Janice
  • Contact Janice

An Adventure with Making a Spiral Mandala Quilt

8/9/2015

4 Comments

 
In January, of this year, I had the pleasure of taking a workshop with Renae Merrill. Renae Is a self-professed “spiral-maniac” who has written two books about making spiral quilts; Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts and Magnificent Spiral Mandal Quilts. I bought Magnificent Spiral Mandal Quilts many years ago and never got around to trying it out. Then Renae came to our guild to give her Magic Mirror Mandala workshop.

I prepared for class by putting together a palette with gradient values from light to dark. I started by finding an inspiration fabric. This could also be considered a theme fabric but there is no guarantee that it will be included in the final piece. It was simply a crutch for putting together a cohesive palette of colors.
Picture
During the class we used the clockwise and counterclockwise spirals supplied to us to draft a wedge. This wedge represents one eighth of the whole pie.
Picture
Next we placed the wedge in a plastic sleeve and used dry erased markers to flesh out a pattern from the units. After you colored in your pie slice, you place a mirror on it to see what the whole thing will look like. At home I would load an image of the wedge into my kaleidoscope program so that I could see what it would look like as a whole.

At first I tried to match the markers to the fabrics I had. This strategy didn’t work for me as they were not exact matches to my fabric colors. The marker colors were too bright. Also I planned on using dark to light values with the color and I found this hard to convey with the dry erase markers.
After my first three attempts with bright markers I decided to try toning the colors down and reducing the number of colors. This helped me to see how they related to each other better. Another issue was that I couldn’t find a yellow dry erase marker and I felt that the orange marker was too bright. It was competing with the other colors in my marker palette. The other colors should appear darker than the yellow/orange. That’s about as far as I got in class. Later in my sewing room I decided to leave the parts that were to be yellow blank. This helped me to conceptualize it better. I was very satisfied with the result. But I had other “quilting” fish to fry so I had to set the project aside.
Recently I was able to make time further the progression of this project. Now that I had decided on a layout, I used colored pencils to make a colored draft that would include the gradient values for each color.  It took three tries before I came up with a design that I liked. Then I realized that I had included a green/yellow in my green palette to represent the lightest value. This was a problem because I don’t have any yellow green fabric in my palette.
So I made one more version that used a very pale green tor represent the lightest value. I also changed which purple I was going to use in the center. After I finally had what I thought was an awesome sketch it was time to make it in fabric. This took some time as I had to be careful not to mix up the little pieces. After a week and a half I had finished my wedge and I love it! Again, I loaded an image of the wedge into my kaleidoscope program so that I could see better see what it would look when finished. I think it looks awesome.
I have to put it away for a while and work on some other things. But now that I have the one finished wedge for reference the other seven will go much quicker. It may be a while but I definitely plan on finishing this project.

4 Comments
    Picture
    Picture

    Janice  Averill
    West Haven, Connecticut, United states

    Welcome to my Blog! This is where I'll share my thoughts about quilting with you. I'll post pictures and talk about designing quilts and construction techniques. I'll also post things that inspire me. Please leave a comment and let me know that you came by for a visit..

    Categories

    All
    100 Block Challenge
    Color Theory
    Connecting Threads
    Contests
    Ct Piecmakers Raffle Quilt
    Electric-quilt-lessons
    Electric Quilt Software
    Fabric Dyeing
    Fons & Porter Magazine
    Free Patterns
    Guild Workshops
    McCall's Quilts
    New Quilt From An Old Favorite
    NQM BOM Round 3
    Published Designs
    Quilter's Gallery
    Quilting Treasures Designs
    Quilting With Jose
    Quiltmaker Magazine
    Random Quilt Adventures
    Video Appearance

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    Archives

    January 2021
    October 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Visit the shops below for kits, fabrics, notions, patterns & magazines or anything else you might
    need to make a quilt.
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

Proudly powered by Weebly