Tag Archives: Quilt Design a Day

My week of QDAD Sparks

This past week, I was so super excited to be hosting the sparks (palette choices/inspiration) for our Quilt Design a Day Facebook group. I decide early on that, I would show and inspire the group participants by using photos from my travels over the years. I had such a blast and was amazed at the designs (make sure you come over and take a look – or even add your own design).

26 April: San Francisco
First up, is Coppola’s Sentinel Building in San Francisco. I love the variations of the copper – those teals!!

I actually based this design on the top of the middle building but I rotated and tilted the design. This seemed to give it much better balance.

27 April: New York High Line
This is one of my favorite spots and photos that I took while visiting New York High Line. Of course, it has one of my favorite color palettes; blue, grey and orange.

I had so many ideas for this one and decide to play around with lines that could possibly be done with improv techniques.

28 April: Washington DC
This was taken in Winter. I love the starkness of the color palette.

My design kind of happened by accident. I accidentally moved pieces off the design worksheet and couldn’t delete them, these landed up being the best part of the design…the left hand side. I love the difference between the darker palette in the right with the starkness of the white panel on the left.

29 April: Venice, Italy (St. Marks Basilica)
I really love neutral palettes, so I decided to challenge the group with a couple of palettes.

The diamonds and the crosses on the side of the building fascinated me. I really liked the repetition options.

29 April: Venice, Italy (Grand Canal + Rialto Bridge)
To be fair to those who don’t like neutrals I also included a brighter palette, but I did not do a design for this one.

30 April: Sintra, Lisbon (Castle of Moors)
Lisbon is one of my favorite cities in the world. This castle has amazing tiles and architectural features. The castle itself has amazing gardens.

I loved the spikes and that gold in this palette, LOVE.

30 April: Lisbon (Coastal Village)
Like I mentioned, I love Lisbon. This photo speaks words about why I love it!!

01 May: Rome, Italy (Coliseum)
This photo was taken by my husband. The illumination of the Coliseum provides an amazing color palette.

I loved the architectural arches, and the top lines of the Coliseum. I really enjoyed this palette.

02 May: Paris, France (Musee d’Orsay)
The glass roof of the old railroad station of Musee d’Orsay has amazing shades of greens.

I did two designs, one more structured that was based on the floor space.

and one that is more adhoc, improv based. I think this is my favorite of the two.

So several of these are on my make list: NY High Line, Sintra Lisbon (Castle of Moors) and Rome Italy (Coliseum) are among my favorites!!

Please Note: If you would like to make or use one of my designs, please email me (ml_wilkie(at)hotmail(dot)com) or leave a comment below. I am happy to talk with you on options and provide the relevant measurements etc. or have you test out a pattern. Also, if you use one of my designs, please use the following text to credit me the design: “Designed by Michelle Wilkie @ Factotum of Arts”.

QDAD: End of March Madness

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Wow, did April not fly by!! It is almost 1/2 way through the year. All of a sudden, I realized I still needed to post the last of my March designs.

Please note the palettes for the following designs are on the groups Facebook page.

24 March: Blocks
I loved this color palette. It was taken from an advertisement from an airplane magazine. I might change this design as the original hand drawn quilt design has the second and the third outer rows completely nested within each other…like nested boxes.

24 March: House blueprints
This is actually the second of my designs. I was playing with some transparency with a mix of solids and low volume prints. This is in fact the layout of the first floor of our house. The flying geese represent stairs while the bars represent floor space. The green solids represent walls. I am definitely plan on making this one up – I love this one.

First design:

25 March: Radio Cover
The inspiration for this design was based on the inspiration photo in our facebook group. It was a photo of old radios. I used the grill of one of the radios.

26 March: Church
The crosses and the steeples representing the church aspects of the image in the windows of the palette image.

27 March: Shut the front door
I am not so keen on this one. The inspiration was based on the palette photo which was of a front door. I was playing around with extending some of the lines

28 March: Blossoms
I loved this design as well. The palette was in the hopes of spring and finally seeing the blossoms start to appear….as not really a pink person I was very surprised how much I love this color palette. I also love the combination of squares within squares and the triangles within squares… each of the larger square divided equally to make 4 pieces.

QDAD: Mid-March

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I have been playing a bit of catch-up today. I was inspired by having some down time while traveling home today from Boston. Finally, I am posting some mid-March designs.

Please note the palettes for the following designs are on the groups Facebook page.

09 March: Tree-lined Street
I loved this palette, and this design is definitely on my make list and my favorite for this month. I am going to try out Nicole’s tutorial over @ Modern Handcraft.

10 March: Lines I
I started playing around with lines in this design. It was a hard color palette to work with.

12 March: Lines II – Creeping Ivy
Continued playing with lines. I think I want to make a quilt at some stage with the use of lines. I am just not sure if I have that design yet.

13 March: Semi-Circles
I love this design, I just don’t like the colors. I think I will play with this a bit more and brave up to try my hand at curves.

14 March: Diamonds
The text-y print in this design definietly balances out and makes the design. I like the mix of colors in the palette with the plums, mauves and pink + mustard, tan + black.

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