New Work - Sunrise Serenade

Somehow I finished this piece, sent it to a show, and never shared it with you all. So here it  is:

Sunrise Serenade © 2013 Diane Rusin Doran

Unsurprisingly, it's a digital collage printed on fabric. I believe I printed it in the spring of 2011. It took me a while to decide on how to quilt it, plus other deadlines loomed, so it patiently waited for my attention. All of the imagery except for perhaps one bird is from photos taken in my yard. 

The quilting was done using mostly Aurifil cotton threads, with a little bit of rayon and silk thrown in. Much of the background quilting is overlapping to echo the transparency of the various background elements. The locust leaves and maple branches/buds were outlined, and then additional quilting was added on top. I originally planned to quilt the birds quite ornately, but thought better of it and went with a simpler approach. It was fun to use so many of my favorite colors (blues and greens) and quilting motifs (leaves and ferns).

P.S. Don't forget the Blog Hop going on until January 28! Both Candy and Sarah are accepting entries now.

Spring Overload

At the risk of becoming a flower/weather blog, boy howdy - how about this spring!  There have been years when our first daffodil hasn't bloomed until March 17, and here we are March 21st and some things are already finished blooming.

These pictures (along with probably a hundred others) were taken in my yard on St. Patrick's Day -

To keep it quilt related, they all inspire me with their color and form. And who knows - maybe they'll end up in a quilt someday?

Down in my lair I've been quilting birds and branches (maybe a little hard to see here - this is the back of the quilt). I'm hoping to make slow but steady progress.

Normally this is the ideal season to photograph birds in silhouette on the beautiful sculptures the branches create. This year I'm afraid the leaf out will be too fast to get many good pictures. Oh well, at least what winter we had is over!

Work in Progress

I'm working on these little red birds - it's about 10"x10".

I'm trying to finish this up by tomorrow - shouldn't be too hard, eh? I love the look of many thread color changes, but hate tying and burying the knots. I recently had a quilt appraised, and "many thread color changes" was one of the notations on the appraisal. It didn't occur to me that all those thread colors would be considered as part of the evaluation, but it makes sense.

May Issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited

I'm thrilled to have been a part of the last two issues of Machine Quilting Unlimited. In March my quilt "Last Dance" was featured as the "Jaw Dropper" (what a great name!).

For the May issue I wrote an article on creating unique quilting motifs. If you've ever wanted or needed to come up with a unique quilting design to fit a block or border, this article has loads of tips on design sources and techniques.


I really love this magazine (and not just because I've been in it). It's a wonderful source of information on all aspects of machine quilting, both domestic and long arm. It also features great articles on wonderful artists who quilt by machine. In the May issue alone there are articles by Carol Ann Sinnreich, Gloria Hansen, Jenny Bowker, Eileen Doughty and more. Suffice to say I really look forward to each new issue!

Snow Dyes - Rounds 1 & 2

I've done three rounds of snow dyeing so far (with *plenty* of snow left to work with). Here are some results from rounds one and two. All of the pictures can be made bigger by clicking on them.

Snow Dyed, then snowverdyed ;)

Bottom fabric was dyed in the drip pan below other fabrics, so technically it was low water immersion dyed

Center fabric was snow dyed twice - once with chocolate brown, then again with grape
The bottom piece was another "drip catcher"

I confess that for my work I prefer little to no white space on a piece of hand dyed fabric. This has led me to usually dye with fabric that has been soaked in soda ash solution then dried before dyeing, or use a drip dyeing method like Robbi Eklow explains in her book Free Expression. For the snow dyed pieces I either redyed ones that came out with more white space than I wanted, or squirted a little extra dye on areas that I could see were really pale. I have a couple of more pieces I'll post a little later.

I finished up an article for the May issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited this week. It's about designing your own quilting motifs, and it was fun to think of lots of ways you can go about that.

I'm also super excited that once again this year I'll have a quilt in Martingale's calendar of IQA award winning quilts. It will be interesting to see what month they decide to use for Last Dance.