January Journal

My January journal quilt was inspired by two sources. The first are the beautiful hay bales in my new home state, Ohio. I loved driving by the bales in the fall, and I thought they would make an interesting perspective study so took a lot of photographs of the bales in the first snow in November.

The second inspiration is the work of Wolf Kahn. I used one of his paintings as the source for the color scheme. I like how he hints at Fauvism with his color schemes, but you can still sense the reality behind the colors. I also like his use of light. In many of his paintings, the light source isn't behind the artist, but far in front of him, off in the distance, so that they highlights are further away from the viewer. It reminds me of watching the sun and shadows play across the hillsides as I drive through Western Maryland.

I like this quilt, and I think I'll continue to do some hay bale studies in a bit larger size. I've never taken a small quilt as inspiration for a larger quilt, but I guess the inspiration would actually be my photographs, so it won't be that different.

I pieced the background and fused the hay bales. I machine quilted the bales and some trees in the distance; then I hand quilted the hay that's in the foreground fields.