Lily Pad Garden

14 ½ x 10

I did the surface design part of this challenge right away. I took hand dyed and commercial fabrics I was not overly thrilled with and discharged, stamped and painted them.

I had taken underwater pictures of the water lilys through the glass wall they have at one edge of a lily pond. My fabrics kept screaming at me to use these pictures for this quilt, but I wasn’t sure they were telling me the right thing. Or maybe I was afraid of doing it wrong. So I procrastinated for six days, and then decided I had better just do it and see what happens.

I spent Thursday afternoon creating the quilt top, and quilted it this morning. I mostly like how it turned out. I need to learn to trust my instincts more.

The quilt seems to lack depth. It isn’t apparent which leaves are closer. They all seem to be on the same plane. Perhaps I could have remedied this by lightening the color of the further away leaves. But I like it the way it is also.

Challenge #12 - "Excess Baggage"

"Excess Baggage" has an upholstery sample for the background. The irregular patches are hand woven fabrics from a student. I love creating texture, both visual and tactile. A few of the elements in my quilt are from the scrapbook section of Michael's - the Chinese knot, the bronze ovals, and the ribbon. Compostion was the toughest to achieve. I had problems placing the rectangles and still creating movement throughout the piece. I think what worked to unify the elements were the "danglies" in the center, and the springs, best seen in the close up on the Yahoo page.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Ann in Walnut, CA

Pink Mountains

I hand dyed a piece of fabric using Ellen Anne Eddy's dyeing method http://www.ellenanneeddy.com/

Then I used Shiva paintsticks and torn paper as a template to add the mountains and highlight the moonlight and lake. Shiva is fun to use if you have the patience to wait 24 hours for it to dry!

Cynthia

Challenge #12

The first image is the quilt I made in response to this challenge. I stamped the dark blue fabric with copper circles and some sparkly stuff. The light blue fabric is quilted in circles, and the peach fabric is quilted with copper sliver. I'm not very happy with this particular surface design that I did.

The second image shows part of a quilt I made a few weeks ago, stamping and rubbing with Shiva Paintstiks on the lighter red batik. Then I quilted the checkerboard using copper sliver, metallic variegated thread, and sulky rayon. This piece is piped with a tiny piping I made using a cotton lame variegated fabric. Pretty, but it still shreds. I like this quilt a lot better, partly because there is not so much contrast between the two colors as in the other quilt.

Surface design is new to me, and I welcome the chance to experiment. Comments are welcome!

Just Playing

I made two. They are very small so I will be sending them to Ami Simms soon for her Alzheimer's auctions.
The background was painted using watered down acrylic paints.
Machine quilted around the painted leaves and then silk flowers were sewn on.
A very fast and easy project

Challenge 12

Challenge # 12 - Friday, August 24, 2007 – Due Saturday, September 1, 2007

Hostess - Gena Flatley

Theme - Maker’s Choice

Design Element- 1) A surface design technique either new or familiar to you.
2) Build on a technique, style, thought or design you’ve used in one of this years other pieces.

This month we will extend our comfort zones to include a surface design technique that you have either used before or one that is new to you. Alter a piece of fabric and use it in a small work. The extent to which you use this design element in your piece is up to you.

Share a paragraph about your technique(s) with the group. Include any problems or successes you have.

Surface design is a wide open area that includes dyes in many forms and applications, discharging, acrylic and textile paints, resists, devores, stamps, stencils, rubs, screen-printing, mono-printing, sun-printing, wax crayons and watercolor pencils and embellishments. I’m sure there are many more types of manipulations with which create new fabric designs than I can list here.

Design may be realistic, representational or abstract.

Discussion The following is included for informational purposes only:

I’m including a list of books that have been helpful to me, along with some websites with technique information. Please feel free to share any websites or information you have that may be of interest to the group on this topic.
The Surface Designer’s Handbook – Holly Brackman
Color by Accident – Ann Johnston
Color by Design – Ann Johnston
Art Quilt Workbook – Jane Davila and Elin Waterson
Complex Cloth – Jane Dunnewold
Dyes and Paints – Elin Noble
http://www.prochemical.com/ – website for dyes, books, etc, with many how-to articles
http://www.dharmatrading.com/ – website for dyes, fabrics, paints, etc with many how-to articles
www.pburch.net/dyeing.shtml - Paula Burch has an excellent extensive site with dyeing info

A final note: this challenge may be easy or hard, I don’t know…. Easy because it is wide open, hard because it is not specific, or vice versa. As we’ve worked through this year we’ve tried many different techniques, styles, interpretations, themes…. It’s been a wonderful year for me to see how everyone works in different ways with different styles and approaches. The photos in the files are absolutely inspiring. As a group, you all can be extremely proud. It’s been a wonderful, wonderful year.


Have fun! Gena

Le Talisman, After Sérusier

13½” x 11½”

I didn’t like my last attempt at a quilt in the style of Sérusier, so I had another try at it. This one is a loose copy of Sérusier’s “Le Talisman”. I like this quilt much more than I did my last one. This was fun. I learned more by trying to copy his painting than I did by doing my own things with his colors.

challenge #11

My inspiration was a painting by Paul Klee called "1919", though some references also call it "1914". You can see the painting with this link: www.chess-theory.com/encprd03014_chess_practice_reflections_debates_arts.php

Klee had a wide variety of styles and you will see many of them at this website. I particularly liked "1919" because of its simplicity, use of a bold black outline as well as its child-like quality. My quilt is entirely fused but has yet to get a border.

Ann In Walnut, CA

Klimt Tree of Life 19.5"x22.5"

Well, I'm a little late, but close this time!

I chose to create a Klimt-style tree of life. It is fused from a heavily metallic gold on orange commercial fabric over a leafy green print and a brown paisley print with lots of gold metallic accents. I think that is why I can't seem to get a decent picture of it. I will try to get a better shot when I can.

I quilted this with gold silk thread. I wanted the quilting to be subtle; unfortunately the quilting doesn't show up very well at all, so it was a bit too subtle. I may add some gold beads to the background area to add some more interest. A la Klimt, you can never have too much bling, right?

This was a lot of fun except for cutting out the spirals (aaghh).

Brenda Jennings

Sérusier’s View

16" x 9"

I spent several days procrastinating and looking at Post Impressionism and Fauvism books. Yesterday I decided to take a different approach and picked a photo of mine to interpret.

Then I looked through the books again to choose a painting to use as inspiration to interpret my photo (taken at the Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts.)
I was drawn to Paul Sérusier’s, Le Talisman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_S%C3%A9rusier. I like the unusual colors he chose, and I thought the large flat areas of color would be easy to translate into cloth.

I put the image of the painting away until I had finished my quilt, because I didn’t want to be tempted to copy what Sérusier had done.

I still love Sérusier’s painting, but I don’t care much at all for what have I done. I thought I would use the warm colors for the very hot day, and the cooler colors for bit of shade that the plants were providing. What I ended up with is a very otherworldy looking something. I will call this a fun “learning experience.”

From ERTE'S Hearts and Zephyrs series...my interpretation of "Heart-I Purple".

I have always loved all of Erte's work and really had fun recreating one of his pieces in fabric. It turned out to be the most involved and labor intensive of all my challenge pieces so far, due to all the beading and painting lace with metalic Tsukineko ink. The fabrics are suede cloth , dupioni silk, and a holographic gold. Background is a metalic look cotton.

Comments and critiques are welcome and appreciated......Cherie

Pieces 10 & 11 by Tina Marie Rey

I am finally posting quilt #10 = better late than never. I used washers on a hand dyed and discharged background. I hands sewed them on using red metallic embroidery thread.
It is unnamed.

I then did #11. I used Monet's flowers as inspiration. I had hand marbled the background fabric in an Elin Noble class back in November of 2005. I had held on to it knowing I didn't want to just cut it up. This background is perfect, I think, because it has such a Monet feel to it. Please feel free to critique or comment!