The Colors & Textures of Tahoe

The Elements of Design: Color, Line, Shape, Texture & Form

I saw Tahoe through an artists eyes.

Remember: What you see depends on your POINT OF VIEW

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The following images are in the order that I viewed them. Something in them struck a chord with me and I began snapping the camera. After a few hours I realized what was grabbing my attention........Design. The visual arts are inspired by The Elements of Design: Color, Line, Shape, Texture & Form.

This was my first view of Tahoe.......Inspiring!

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This little guy is definitely walking into one of my future textiles

The bare stems on this shrub have so much texture.

I could see them enlarged and transferred onto cloth as a background.

These abandoned boats drew me in with their color and orderliness all lined up in a row like soldiers.

Not a lot of color here, but color doesn't always need to be your biggest design element. The silhouette of the trees against the setting sun creates the mood.

Most of the time you NEVER want to shoot into the sun. It is preferable to have the sun at your back. Once in awhile, when it just feels right.....I shoot directly into the sun and sometimes something wonderful comes from it. This is an inspiration for a landscape quilt.

The texture of the water, the texture of the rocks.

This is a door in a hotel. The lines in the circular design would lend themselves to a free-motion quilting motif on a quilt.

This is a floor in a hotel lobby. It reminds me of a bundle of rust dyed fabrics I won last year at a quilting retreat. I now have the inspiration I need to get busy and cut up those rusted fabrics and put them into a quilted textile.

It wasn't long before my husband, who had NO IDEA why I was taking photos of floors, got in on the fun and was finding different floors for me to photograph!

This floor really appeals to the circle lover in me...

We stayed on the 11th floor.......so this was a daily image for me......elevator buttons!

I have always been intrigued by the bark on the Ponderosa Pine Trees. Such line and texture.

If you study the bark close up, it will help you visualize the lines and patterns to use in your free-motion quilting work.

I love the softness of the blue sky and water, and also the texture of the tree needles, and the contrast of all the colors.

The cedar tree also has wonderful texture and line to its bark.

This cedar tree, still growing and surviving after a fire. This is the burned out section of the trunk...I love the texture of the bark on the right side of the tree.

This is a rock wall on the outside of a hotel.

Another great background or layer of transfer on a textile.

I am attracted to the texture of the rocks, and also the play of light and dark around the rocks.

The carpet in a hotel lobby.

Curves are so eye catching.

Another carpet in a hotel hallway.

I like the contrast of the curves and swirls with the checkerboard.

A flat, metal sculpture hanging in a hotel hallway by the elevators. I love the way the light dances across the metal.

Sometimes you need to look down at your feet......design elements are all around you!

A marker on the sidewalk displaying the location of the telephone lines.

This surrounded the trunk of a tree, set into a sidewalk. It protected the tree, and was beautiful to look at...lines, curves, dots, points.

The last image I have to share, along with my foot, is the carpet in another hotel lobby. Curvy lines add so much movement, I am drawn to them.

Keep looking......the elements of design are all around you!

If you are inspired by any of these images, help yourself and download them. They are at full resolution and will print very nicely for you.

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Just My Point of View,

LuAnn

Road Trip...

We loaded up the pick up and are heading down the road.

We are ready for adventure!

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We are headed south to Lake Tahoe

I have my Pepper Dish Quilt packed up. I am ready for miles and miles of hand sewing the binding, hanging sleeve & label.

We grew up watching The Glen Campbell Good Time Hour

True Grit is still one of our favorite movies

While in Tahoe we will see Glen Campbell sing Live!

click here to see what Glen Campbell is singing now

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On The Road,

LuAnn

Thread Shed Tour

Thread Shed Tour

2009

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It has been a few years since I have photographed my Thread Shed. It was a beautiful day today and I had time on my hands......between many loads of laundry.

My favorite guy built this for me in 2000. This is the front entrance. The building is 20 x 16 feet. It is located in our yard just a few feet away from the house. My husband named the building, Thread Shed, while he was building it.

There are 3 different kinds of ivy growing up the front of the building. I also have a vine planted on the archway in front of the door. Over the years we have landscaped the building on all 4 sides.

My aunt surprised me with a chicken bell.......visitors enjoy ringing the bell before they enter.

My brother-in-law, who is a sign maker, surprised me with a vinyl sign for the front door window..... Annylu's Thread Shed. My nieces and nephews shortened Auntie Lu Lu to......Annylu years ago.......and it stuck. I am known to many friends and family members as.....Annylu.

Last summer we built a new design wall. I originally used flannel backed tablecloths thumb tacked to the wall. This works well, and I could layer the tablecloths 6 deep and stack up many works-in-progress. Now I have the best design wall ever. We used sheets of insulation, they are very lightweight like Styrofoam, 4 x 8 foot sheets. We covered 2 sheets with Warm 'N Natural batting and put them on the wall together, creating an 8 x8 foot design wall. I Love it. It is thick and I can stick pins into it. Most projects stick to the batting really well, but once in awhile I get a heavier piece, and it needs to be pinned. I work on a lot of quilts at the same time, so I can still stack them 6 deep if need be. Right now there is Moose Lodge on top, under that is a baby quilt, a landscape quilt, and pieces for my sunflower quilt in progress. Having a vertical design wall is one of the very best improvements to my quilting since I began in 1987.

I enjoyed furnishing the Thread Shed with used furniture that was sentimental to me. This green bookshelf was purchased from an estate sale at a nearby neighbor's house. I Love the old chipped paint and I think of her each time I reach for one of my reference books.

The top of the bookshelf is like a shrine. Look around your sewing room, I bet you have created a shrine without even realizing it. My quilters journal, family photos, gifts from close friends are all located on on the top of this bookshelf. It is very old, but very sturdy and holds most of my reference books and binders.

This is the media center. The corner cupboard on the left belonged to my husband's grandmother. It was her sewing cupboard. I found old patterns and notions still inside when I inherited it. I keep a small TV on it. Inside the door is a DVD & VCR player. On the right is a lime green cupboard found at a thrift store. It has a stereo on top, and inside the double doors it holds DVD's and VHS tapes. I like that I can store everything away inside these cupboards and keep the clutter to a minimum.

All of the wall outlets are 3 feet up on the wall....no more bending over to the floor to plug something in. There are 24 outlets around the room, each wall is on its own circuit so I never blow a fuse. My husband installed a switch that turns the electricity off to the entire room at once.

This cupboard is the island out of our kitchen. We remodeled years ago, and I salvaged the tall island cupboard for storage. It is tall, so is a perfect height for rotary cutting.......easy on my back when I am cutting for several hours. Behind the 3 doors is my collection of landscape fabrics.

This is a very old spool cupboard I found at the thrift store. It is homemade, with nails hammered in very neatly to support the spools of thread. It was a whopping $2 dollars and worth every penny. I keep my everyday threads in here that I use for general sewing.

This is a vintage kitchen cupboard that was mounted on a wall at one time. I have it standing on an old piano bench to raise it up off the floor. It holds all my notions. Again, everything is kept stored behind the doors and keeps down the clutter.

This cupboard was my son's baby dresser. I found it at a thrift store and refinished it when he was an infant. When he was ready to part with it, I was more than happy to use it for storage. It holds all my mixed media supplies.

I do the majority of pressing on this vintage, wooden ironing board. It is small and doesn't take up a lot of floor space. I have a large ironing board with a BIG BOARD that fits on top, but only use it when pressing large quilt backings.

This is one of two tall vintage cupboards that holds my fabric stash.

CLICK HERE for the 2012 Thread Shed Tour

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May Your Bobbin Always Be Full,

LuAnn

The Most Important Part of Machine Quilting...

The most important part of machine quilting is the basting. Repeat after me: The Most Important Part of Machine Quilting is the Basting.

For 20 years I pin basted. I would put on a movie and place a safety pin every 4 inches across the entire surface of the quilt sandwich. I actually enjoyed this process and found it relaxing. It worked fairly well to stabilize the 3 layers of the quilt sandwich and I was satisfied with the results. The only drawback was removing the safety pins as I quilted. Many times I would nearly run over the top of them if I was concentrating on my stitching, and not so much on the pins coming along into the path of the needle.

Thanks to Patsy Thompson I now use Basting Spray. After watching one of her DVD's I decided to give spray basting a try. That was 2 years ago and I haven't gone back to pin basting yet.

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Basting spray can be found at your local quilt shop, fabric stores and department stores. One can will do several large quilts. The most important part of using basting spray is.......shaking the can very well for at least 2 minutes! If it isn't shaken well, the adhesive will not stick and your quilt sandwich will come apart.........ask me how I know this? So......shake it well......until you feel like you are shaking pudding. You will be amazed at how well this holds the layers together......it really works!

The second most important thing is to spray baste outdoors. The fumes can be a bit overwhelming. I suggest a warm day with no wind. If spraying indoors, the adhesive can travel through the air and land on your........sewing machine.........not good. I try to keep my basting to outdoors when possible. On rainy days, the garage is a good location to spray baste, or a covered patio area.

For a large quilt I set up 2 of these banquet tables to support most of the quilt. Today I am preparing a 40 x 40 inch wall quilt, so I only needed one table. Layer the quilt sandwich, shake the can very well, and spray each layer individually, press the next layer on top, spray it, then press the final quilt top layer down. The quilt sandwich will stick together immediately.......providing you have shaken the can of baste spray very well. The first time you do this it is good to have a friend help you. I can now baste a king size quilt by myself without any problems.

Now that the quilt sandwich is basted, the next thing I do is spray my quilting surface with Silicone Spray. I love this product. It makes the surface so slippery, the quilt sandwich just glides across the tables like it's on ice skates.

I use several tables in front and beside my sewing machine to fully support the quilt sandwich, and all of these are sprayed with silicone. It will not harm your tables, I even spray it on the bed of my sewing machine. It will not harm your machine. The silicone dries immediately and you can get right to work machine quilting.

My quilt sandwich is in place, it is fully supported by the tables, it doesn't hang off the edge, I am now ready to get to work.

Free Motion or Darning Feet.........which one to choose? This one came with my machine. It is a large plastic, oval shaped foot. It does a good job, but I cannot do precision work with it, as it doesn't allow me to see intricate details very well.

This darning foot is a small circle and works very well. I purchased it when I realized the first darning foot obstructed my view.

This has become my very favorite foot for free-motion quilting. It is a circle with a bite out of the side. See how good my view is as I look down through the foot. I can do very detailed and precise quilting and see just exactly where the needle is going. I love this foot!

I have basted, prepared my work surface with silicone, chosen the darning foot........all I need now are my favorite tunes on the stereo and 12 hours to get this baby quilted!

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Everything is Better when it is Quilted,

LuAnn

Pepper Dish is Quilted

I spent 12 hours yesterday free-motion quilting the Pepper Dish Quilt. I am leaving next week on a road trip, and I want to take this along to do the handwork while I am traveling. Most of my bindings, hanging sleeves and labels are sewn on while we are traveling along at 55 mph.

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After the machine quilting was complete, I blocked the quilt top and hung it up on the design wall too cool off a bit. I will square up the edges later. This was a good time for a photo session.

Unfortunately, I had a piece of thread jam between my tension discs and I tried to remove it but it broke off.......I was not happy.......and neither was my machine. The tension was never quite right after that and I was having a lot of thread breakage, which I never have with my Bernina. It is off to the repair shop this week.

Overall I am happy with the machine quilting. The feather was a good choice for the curvy border. I kept the thread colors low contrast so they would blend and not draw too much attention away from the quilt top itself. There are a lot of different fabrics in this quilt, and I didn't want the thread colors competing with them.

If you look closely, you can see where Judy Neimeyer, the pattern designer, has signed my quilt. I made this quilt top in a 3 day workshop with Judy in Idaho in 2006.

When my repaired and freshly cleaned Bernina comes back from the shop I plan to rip out a few stitches on this and fix all the places where the tension was poor. Normally I wouldn't go to this extreme, but I plan to show this quilt and I need it to be the best it can be.

I added this photo to show you just what flash photography can do to a quilt. It completely bleaches all the color out of it and distorts the color. In this photo the green border appears blue, and the gold background looks pale grayish yellow. When photographing your quilts.....turn the flash OFF on your camera. Lighting from the sides is best when shooting indoors. On a non-windy and overcast day, outdoor photography is my favorite.

p.s. To see more Pepper Dish Click HERE

To see more Exhibit Quilts CLICK HERE

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May Your Bobbin Always Be Full,

LuAnn

Easily Distracted...

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Birds That Sing: By Penny Mattson

The sunshine was too much to resist, so I threw on my work clothes and went outside to finish painting the birdhouse I started last week. The second coat of white paint went on quickly.

I also painted the post that the birdhouse will be mounted on.

While the paint was drying I grabbed the camera to capture the flowering cherry tree just beginning to bloom. The tiny white blooms look like popcorn popping out all over the branches.

Close Up shot of the popcorn popping

I looked down to see the periwinkels blooming. They are a beautiful shade of blue.

I decided to mow the lawn while I continued to wait for the paint to dry. This is my trusty Craftsman aka Craftsgirl mower. We have a very large yard and this riding mower has mowed every inch of it for 19 years.

Craftsgirl has seen lots and lots of miles. Both my boys learned to drive on her. She no longer has headlights and she has lots of battle scars, but she starts when you turn the key and hums right along.

Unfortunately, this is the final resting place for Craftsgirl.........she fell apart while I was mowing today. We nearly made it over the whole lawn, and the steering column came apart and the mower deck fell apart. Brad, her chief mechanic, warned me last month that she wouldn't make it much longer.......but that didn't make it any easier when it finally happened.

Here she is resting quietly under the apple tree.....no headlights, her mower blade sitting on top of the hood, lots of rust from her battle scars, a torn seat that carried me many miles of mowing. I will miss you old girl.

While parked under the apple tree I looked up and noticed the sweet, little, pink buds. The promise of sweet, juicy apples later this year.

I looked down and noticed something embedded into the yard. I kicked the grass away with my foot and unearthed the old Pitcher's Mound my kids used throughout their childhood. I had been mowing over that for years and forgot it was there.

This was just the distraction I needed...

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May Your Bobbin Always Be Full,

LuAnn