Judy's "Flowers for Our Lady of the Rosary"

It all started with a class...

a class that Judy signed up for. The class was for the "Passion Flowers" quilt in the book Applique Outside the Lines by Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins of Piece-o-Cake Designs. Judy took this class. This red quilt is the quilt in the book. Very pretty if I say so myself. Judy marches to the beat of her own drummer, very similar to myself. And she decided to uses deep blues, turquoises, and aquas for her background. WOW... a simple color change can make such a dramatic difference.

Here is Judy's finished quilt:

And here are some detail photos:

Okay, I bet by now you are wondering where Judy's title for her quilt comes in...

Judy was working on this quilt, and working on it, and working on it some more... she finally finished it on October 7 - which just happens to be Our Lady of the Rosary Day. Cool huh... it gets better! Judy had no idea what she was going to use for a backing for this quilt. Then the fabric found her... it is a rose print. Even though it is multiple levels of pinks and whites it works with this quilt -- so neat, I just love things like this!

So... Judy wanted this quilted special! I decided to take her title and attempt to interpret her thoughts and how the title came about and translate all of that into stitches on the quilt. In the center I stitched a mod-cross and placed circles all around to resemble the rosary and filled them with feathers and little pebbles or beads... so while you were looking at the quilt you wouldn't actually think cross and rosary, but knowing the entire story the quilting shows the meaning and is perfect. Or at least I think so!

Zentangle… Obsession or Addiction

What is Zentangle? Squidoo states “In a word, a doodle. A structured, contained doodle.”

I have always doodled. There is always paper, notebooks, sketch pads, you name it, they are all over my house, everywhere -- there are even a few Magna-Doodles if you look hard enough. If you open any of them you will find a myriad of doodles, drawings, quilting ideas, new motifs, background fills, etc.

About a year ago I stumbled upon Zentangle’s blog – I would read the posts, doodle and enjoy. After following the blog and doodling my own tangles I noticed there was an awesome connection between Zentangles and machine quilting. I noticed that I was actually drawing little background fills. Now I realize that not all of these are “quilt-able”, but tangling puts your mind in such a creative zone it is almost scary. Be warned, doodling a tangle can take a few minutes, or few hours, depending on the size and fills.

Here is a picture of my latest tangles...

Drawing, doodling, sketching, tangling, whatever name you choose to call it, it is fun, relaxing, and almost meditative. Try it!

The Zentangle® art form and method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. Zentangle® is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.