Freedom to Wear Orange

Hi! My name is Marje Rhine. I am a quilt pattern designer (Quilt Design NW), teacher, longarm quilter, and, most importantly, pattern editor for American Quilter magazine. I'll be posting occasionally on this blog.

I belong to a journal quilt group that meets monthly to share thoughts and ideas about our little challenge quilts. Every meeting we choose a word, technique, and fabric to inspire us (or not, as sometimes happens) to make a quilt for the next month. My quilts finish to about 9" x 12". For the most recent meeting, we were to use items from our art supply cupboard in any way. The key word was 'freedom' and the fabric was one I decided not to use. (There are no set rules, so I could do that.)

I had recently read the new AQS book, Faux Appliqué, by Helen Stubbings. She uses colored pencils to re-create the look of appliqué. So, out came my colored pencils. Following Helen's instructions, I colored this black and white motif printed on fabric (small photo) just to see how the process worked. I treated the fabric per Helen's recommendation so the coloring wouldn't easily wash or rub out, and it worked well. I see many possibilities for this technique.

In the meantime I was thinking about 'freedom.' To me, freedom meant I could do anything (legal!) I wanted, even wear orange! I found a great zebra-stripe fabric in my stash, but no bright orange colored pencil. So I used an orange hi-lighter pen to color a piece of the fabric, then treated it (again per Helen's recommendation in the Faux Appliqué book). I designed a saw-horse zebra block and pieced 6 zebras - 5 white & black and one orange & black. I call my creation, Freedom to Wear Orange. The quilt was fun to make, and I had a ball seeing what everyone else did for their little quilts.

Submitted by Marje Rhine, pattern editor for American Quilter magazine