AUTUMN TEXTURE, Nature Colors, Botanical Designs

With Christmas and Hannukah gift production in full swing, and the California autumn late in coming, I have not had time to give the season it's proper tribute.  This week, I finally decided to soak up the fall colors and textures and throw my shoulder into some beautiful gifts and home decorations on my quilting system.  I returned from some more traditional Holiday fabrics (will revisit in posts to come) to my current passion:  Batiks!  From warm pumpkins to browns and olives, and then to some cooler taupe gray brown color ways, I found lots of Autumn inspiration.

I decide to throw on some small table runners simply pieced or whole cloth to give as Thanksgiving hostess gifts and a house warming for a single male friend, and a throw quilt in browns with a pop of pumpkin for a male relative for Christmas.  

What else to go along with the earthy colors and patterns?  Botanical texture designs of all sorts:

Leaves!!  echoed all over leaf (on the left), swirly sashing leaf and oak leaf swirls in the pumpkin stripe (below).

And the swirl flower makes a fabulous edge to edge that is all about the texture it leaves behind!!!

And then the smaller projects which are always great for practicing or learning new free motion quilt designs I've been waiting to try!

Oyster clam is a great textural stand by, looks masculine and fantastic without competing with the print or pattern.

This is a new one I'm experimenting with, I call the Crinkle Rose, based on the loopy flower, but less 'fussy' or feminine.  I start with a swirl and then wiggle around to echo once, twice or three times and echo to travel to a new spot.  For smaller fill areas, I also add a couple of leaves here and there to reinforce the flower/botanical look.

Shout out to Angela Walters and Quilting Is My Therapy for this great place to launch:  the swirl chain with straight line filler.  So formal and yet adds a beautiful texture to a simpler print or a solid.

And Curl Feathers are always the right choice!  Love any kind of feathers, but this one is looser and less formal, with random curls and every couple of petals get an echoed center element.  Then echo around the entire feather and straight line quilt to accent the central design.

I hope you're finding ways to enjoy the fall and changing seasons and be creative!  Let's make something!!  

~Happy Quilting.