Monday, April 29, 2013

Iris

The iris of the eye is named for the Greek goddess Iris who was goddess of the rainbow, so I chose to incorporate the whole of the rainbow as the color of this eye.

This was a fun challenge.  I'm most pleased that I was able to pull all the colors from my scrap bin -- except for the rainbow stripe and black & white background fabrics.

The finished piece is 15" square.  Comments/critiques are welcomed.

Robert Hartley

My Eyes

My eyes are from a Photoshop drawing that I finished over the weekend.  Much of the work I've been doing lately are combinations of freehand line drawings and my altered photographs layered in Photoshop.  One day, maybe some of them will find their way into art quilts.



Thursday, April 25, 2013

Challenge 80: The Eyes Have It!

Theme: The Eyes have it.

Host:  Tobi Hoffman

Due Date:  May 4, 2013


When I was growing up, one friend of the family had a drawing by an artist who specialized in scientific illustration.  The picture was maybe 15 inches wide and 10 or 12 inches in height, and quite accurate in detail; at that size, it was a striking piece of art.  A one-time artist roommate of mine once chose a Time Magazine cover of Martin Luther King Jr. as a subject; she painted one eye first, and then moved out from there for a complete portrait, but that eye was still notably the center.  Many writers and sages have used the eye as a metaphor, praised the beauty of a lover’s eyes, talked about it as the window of the soul.  For this challenge, focus your eyes on the Eye, or Eyes, as the subject.  It may be part of the face, or stand by itself, be realistic or not, be a single eye, a pair of eyes, many eyes or pairs of eyes.  For that matter, it may not be even a human eye, but an animal’s, cat or goat or fish.

As an added piece of the challenge, take one of the following quotes (or find any other that you like) for further inspiration:

The eyes are the mirror of the soul.  Yiddish Proverb

The eye is the jewel of the body. Henry David Thoreau

No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.  Jean Toomer

When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.  Cathy Guisewite (“Cathy” comic strip)

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect. G. K. Chesterton

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.  Marcus Tulius Cicero

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.  Mark Twain

The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake. Leonardo da Vinci

You never know how you look through other people's eyes.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.  Mahatma Gandhi 

Images of the eye:



Animal eyes:  http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-3  

Abstract eye art:  http://tinyurl.com/FFFC80-4

And some specific examples of eyes in quilted art:


Cindy Bettinger (check out the header on her site and her portraits): http://www.cindybettinger.com/gateway/art-quilting/


And one further note: have fun with this!

Friday, April 12, 2013

Harrison quilt

Although this quilt is not quilted, I have finished piecing it. I will be having it long-arm quilted. The pattern in this quilt has infinite possibilities. I learned this technique from Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr, while on a Craftsy Quilting Cruise a few weeks ago. It's a very simple technique that requires that you start with a 10 1/2" wide strip of tan fabric and a 1" inch strip of red fabric. You cut off a piece of the tan fabric in a width anywhere from 1.5" to 4.5". You can then cut that piece up into further segments, stitch the red strips onto the cut edges and reassemble the piece, and add it on to the existing strip. You could keep going forever, but I stopped at 80" long and 48" wide. I will be donating this quilt to my family for our Harrison Family Reunion coming up in 2014 to use as a fundraiser raffle quilt. I think the red strips seem to form the letter "H" in different heights, if looked at from the side, so I'm hoping that this will make a good Harrison quilt.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Infinity Spiral


This 7" quilt was supposed to show a dark square spiraling infinitely into a light center. There are actually 5 different yellow fabrics in the center, but they are almost too small to see. It didn't come out as envisioned, but it was fun to make and a surprise to see how it turned out.