A quick note before I get to this week’s topic ~
I met with my friend Kristi for lunch this week, and she mentioned that there is a quilter who wants to go on the trip to England and Wales for the Birmingham Quilt Festival, but she doesn’t have a roommate. If you’ve been dreaming of this trip, but don’t have someone to go with, please contact Kristi to talk about it. Click here for her contact information and all the details. Thanks!
This post is sort of a “mixed bag” on the topic of gradations. Recently Kelly sent me a photo of a quilt she’d completed. Here’s her comment:
“Hi Chris, I took your gradation class at the guild meeting at Cranberry Country Quilters in Eagle River and sat and looked at my piece for over a year until I finally figured out what to do with it. I’m including a picture of the wall hanging I made it into.”
I call this class Gradation Play. In it the students create a bargello style background using only one yard of a gradation fabric. It’s up to them to decide what to do next. Kelly’s trees and spectacular quilting are perfect on her background.
I absolutely love it, and knew I had to share it with you all.
It reminded me of photos sent to me by my son’s best friend Jesse (who is like a second son). He moved to Alaska a few years ago and got into photography. Here’s just one of his wonderful photographs of the northern lights:
I think Kelly nailed it 😁! And isn’t Jesse’s photo amazing! I might have to share more of his work in the future.
Then I found the following post from the Great Wisconsin Quilt show on Facebook:
To link to my lecture click here and ENJOY!
If you’ve made a quilt using gradations please send me a photograph and I’ll share it in a future post!
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And one more thing! You may have noticed the block at the top of this post had many of the same colors as were found in Karen’s quilt and Jesse’s photograph.
I recently made it using the On-Point ruler by Donna Lynn Thomas. I purchased her ruler in Paducah quite a few years ago and finally decided to sit down and figure it out. I used a leftover piece of a beautiful gradation plaid, and really enjoyed the process while stitching this single block. After making it I decided I wanted to know more about Donna Lynn and maybe take a class from her. I did an internet search and found no recent information about her.
I did however find a site that had a great explanation of the ruler and how to use it:
Click here if you’d like to read about it. Actually, I’ve found the entire Generations Quilt Patterns site to be chock full of great patterns and inspiration. You can visit their home page here.
But that doesn’t tell me what happened to Donna Lynn. Does anyone have anything they could share about Donna Lynn Thomas? I’d still like to take a class from her. Thanks in advance if you do!