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This small quilt began as a drawing of a woman with an umbrella on paper.  I drew the Zentangle® patterns around her with a pigment liner pen.  I printed the drawing onto cotton with my inkjet printer, added the color wash, and used scraps from quilting to frame the drawing.

The colorway for this quilt comes from the cyan-magenta-chartreuse set of transparent primary colors.  It takes transparent color to allow the drawing to come through.  This type of print-and-paint gives me the opportunity to make a series of quilts from the same labor-intensive drawing.  I have been in galleries with easel artists who sell their painting numerous times by making prints.  My method provides a unique composition, but allows me to work quickly on multiples.

The primary benefit of the discipline of Zentangle® drawing comes from a relaxed approach to infilling a background.  In order to do free-motion quilting in a truly freehand way, I need a repertoire of patterns that are adaptable to different sizes and shapes of quilted areas.  It is also necessary to learn to divide the quilted surface into sub-sections, and Zentangle® provides practice making these divisions (called ‘strings’ by the founders).

I have also enlarged the patterns significantly in order to provide a more interesting style of background quilting.  This black matrix quilt started with a rubbing of an elm stump.  The machine quilting is straightforward right up to the  edge of the stump.  For the background, I used simple ‘string’ divisions and then drew upon Zentangle® patterns to fill the black background area.  It takes excellent lighting to see the patterns in the background, which adds a bit of a surprise to the artwork.

Even though we may no longer be interested in covering every available surface with Zentangle® drawings, practice with this drawing system is uniquely helpful to any quilter developing freemotion patterns.

Dennis will be demonstrating turning the Zentangle® decorated ornaments at the Southern States Woodturning Symposium in Gainesville, NC , April 4-6.  I will do some tangling for that demonstration to encourage woodturners to explore drawing and decorating on wood.  We will also bring blanks of aspen and holly to see if there is a market for woodturning blanks, turned eggs, ornament shapes, and needle cases made here in Colorado.

The photo shows some drawings on needle cases I made from holly.

It was cold and slippery the weekend of our Studio Tour holiday sale, so I brought along some blank versions of these aspen ornaments.  Nancy, Ginny, and Kathleen all spent part of the afternoon sitting by the fire, drawing their designs  on the aspen.  (See all of their work on the Front Range Open Studios page)

It turns out that Zentangle® designs are everywhere!  This creative drawing method was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas.  You can find materials, instructions, and list of Certified Zentangle teachers on their website, zentangle.com.   There are hundreds of ornaments with these types of designs on the internet.  I think ours were the most fun, however, because we made them with friends.