Wrought Iron quilting inspriation

Last week my sweetie and I took the week off for our anniversary.  I love spending time with him.  Taking day trips from home means we get to sleep in our own bed.  Nothing better than that I say.  Well perhaps the enjoyment of coming home to our own bed after a week or so of being away.

One of the days we went to CT with one of our planned stops being United House Wrecking.  I think we learned about this place on some tv show years ago and anytime we get a chance we meander through.  The staff is quite friendly offering help everywhere we go.

The table at the left is quite graphic and very quilterly.  I can see several ways for this to be put together or stitched out in a quilt top.  So inspiring.  This is one image that I’d encourage quilting students to use as a practice piece to get the rhythm of stitching out this particular motif.   And before you ask, yes, I’d also have a student stitch the circle in the center as it’s a great way to practice starts and stops and burying thread.

This dresser too is a great way of visualizing and practicing quilting motifs.  This can be stitched out and add so much to your quilt top.  I love that the motifs are symmetrical and are not just in a straight line.  This is a way of looking at the space and seeing more, something different and unique in a space.

This is also why I’ve developed And Now What?!  The space offers so much opportunity for figuring out how to fill it.  There are so many opportunities and motifs that it can be rather overwhelming, but taking photos of objects like these are rather helpful in the process.

Wrought iron helps in that process as well.  The wrought iron gate is amazing.  By adding a little bit of detail here and there (and it’s not all feather work) the space in our quilts can become something quite striking.  There are parts on here that I would draw onto the quilt before stitching it out and parts that I’d just go for.

I’d mark the basic structure of the gate including the “NY Beauty” part of the arch and the center line for registration, the rest I’d just go for and stitch it out.  It’s really freeing to stitch out the details.  I’d most likely stitch this out in one color, or not.  I like the thought of developing the color to add details and texture to the quilt.

There was so much wrought iron in the yard of United House Wrecking that we were outside a good 20 minutes before going in.

This fireplace screen is another example of filling a space with stitching motifs.  I can see at least 2 ways, no make that 3 of this being made into a quilt top.

1) Whole cloth – single color with single line

2) Whole cloth – single color with the lines being stitched around to create distance and depth

3) Bias tape to create the design and then a serious amount of quilting to really set up the design.

One final wrought iron fixture for today.  I have a lot more that I posted to facebook!

This one reminds me of Jeanie Sumrall-Ajero’s Kaleidoscope quilts that I get to quilt for her.  Just a note I’ll have 2 more quilts in the Kaleidoscope Collections booth.  Jeanie is debuting software at Quilt Market in Houston in a few weeks and I’ve been quilting for her.  I’ll share pictures when I can of the quilts we’re working on.  For now it has to be super secret.

Jeanie’s software takes bits and pieces of images and makes them into kaleidoscope images that we can print on our ink jet printers and incorporate into our quilts.  One of the reasons that I like quilting these images is that I like to find a path for stitching and highlight some component of the kaleidoscope image that creates a new layer to the image.

As I stitched on one of the quilts the other day I realized that the images produced using Jeanie’s software will be perfect for practicing machine quilting, they provide a great way to begin to look beyond what I initially see, good and frequently subtle lines to follow and to experiment with color.

What do you see in this gazebo top?

Does this inspire you to quilt?

Where can you see these shapes and textures being used in your quilt?

Happy Quilting!

Teri