Prepping For New Door Quilts

As you may know by now, most of my projects revolve around filling a need and making something practical and useful. If you’ve been following my posts about Door Quilts, you’ll know I have made six nice 12″ stand-alone fabric quilt blocks to hang on my front door. They lie flat and don’t get squished like a wreathe does between the front door and the screen door.

However, when I pulled out the Patriotic Door Quilt last month, I noticed it’s really faded from the sun. Here’s how it looked when new…

…and now it’s really bleached out from the sun:

Rather than make a bunch more fabric quilt blocks, I thought if I painted a quilt block on wood and coated it with an acrylic spray it would last better in the sun (kind of like the huge barn quilts you see across the country).

While I’m waiting for Bert to cut 12″ square boards for me, I thought I’d see if I could make miniature ones to satisfy my need to practice with paints. So, eventually, my fabric door quilts will evolve into wooden quilt blocks that will also hang on the front door and solve my problem just fine!

It’s been a long time since I painted anything. I’m not especially creative with paint, put I enjoyed playing with a few paints to make my garden stakes a few weeks ago (https://marykisner.com/final-garden-signs-for-2022/).

It helped that the pictures were tiny and didn’t need to be too detailed!

Twenty years ago, I spent hours painting small houses based on photographs. They were also not “creative” but instead were mostly straight lines and the photographs showed me shadows.

This is the house I grew up in, from an old photograph.
The camp was fun to paint because I could add the tiny outhouse!

So, after making the garden stakes, I thought I’d try some miniature flowers:

This tiny canvas is 3″ x 4″

Even though I copied the daffodils from a photograph, I had to really struggle to get the petals turned right and getting the color right. Very frustrating. The point of painting was to do something fun, not frustrating! It seemed like I needed to paint something with straight lines. Quilt blocks would be perfect.

First Attempt

I started with a set of 3″ x 3″ square tiny canvases and some tiny easels to go with them. So cute!

This block is called Vermont Maple Leaf.

Adding the lines with a fine black marker seemed to help it look more finished.

Second Attempt

This block is called Fifty-four Forty or Fight. It’s the same block I made in fabric.
I must say it’s a challenge to get in those tiny points!
The fine black marker helped it feel finished.

While I’m waiting for my 12″ wood squares, I’ll experiment with tiny ones to see which patterns would look good on the front door! I must be nuts! Enjoy!

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.

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